The Archaeology of Semiotics and the social order of things is edited by George Nash and George Children and brings together 15 thought-provoking chapters from contributors around the world. A sequel to an earlier volume published in 1997, it tackles the problem of understanding how complex communities interact with landscape and shows how the rules concerning landscape constitute a recognised and readable grammar. The mechanisms underlying landscape grammar are both physical and mental, being based in part on the mindset (...) of the individual; the same landscape can thus evoke different meanings for different people and at different times. People's perception has greatly influenced the construction of landscapes over millennia but, until recently, the potential of this area has been largely untapped. Apart from chapters focusing solely upon human interaction with landscape, there are several which skilfully integrate artefacts and place with landscape (e.g. Gheorghiu and Sognnes). Other chapters look at the way people have marked the landscape through such mechanisms as rock-art (e.g. Clegg, Devereux, Estévez, Fossati, Kelleher and Skier). Rock-art establishes personal and communal identity in relation to landscape and it is clear that other forms of visual expression were in place which distinctively created special places within the landscape. Landscape constructs can bind cultures together; bringing the old ways of reading the landscape into contemporary life (e.g. Smiseth). Defining early and late prehistoric landscapes and segregating these into, say, mundane domestic and ritualised spaces rely on both clear and subtle archaeologies and in this volume distinct monument clustering and ritualised linearity are considered (e.g. Mason and Nash). A volume such as this cannot escape the influence of New World approaches, such as anthropology, and in many respects chapters by Bender, Muller and Merritt give context to other chapters within the book. Finally, one must consider text as a means of constructing landscape and this is considered by Heyd, who eloquently deconstructs the travel diary of a 17th century Japanese poet. This will be an important volume for archaeologists, landscape scholars and students. The many approaches used are tried and tested, forming an invaluable resource and not just another edited book. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 12, December 2024, Page 48-51.

Children's vulnerability gives rise to duties of justice towards children and determines when authority over them is legitimately exercised. I argue for two claims. First, children's general vulnerability to objectionable dependency on their caregivers entails that they have a right not to be subject to monopolies of care, and therefore determines the structure of legitimate authority over them. Second, children's vulnerability to the loss of some special goods of childhood determines the content of legitimate authority over (...) them. My interest is in the so-far little-discussed goods of engaging in world discovery, artistic creation, philosophical pursuits and experimentation with one's self. I call these ‘special goods of childhood’ because individuals, in general, only have full access to them during childhood and they make a distinctive and weighty contribution to wellbeing. Therefore, they are part of the metric of justice towards children. The overall conclusion is that we ought to make good institutional care part of every child's upbringing. (shrink)

Young children interpret some acts performed by adults as normatively governed, that is, as capable of being performed either rightly or wrongly. In previous experiments, children have made this interpretation when adults introduced them to novel acts with normative language (e.g. ‘this is the way it goes’), along with pedagogical cues signaling culturally important information, and with social-pragmatic marking that this action is a token of a familiar type. In the current experiment, we exposed children to novel (...) actions with no normative language, and we systematically varied pedagogical and social-pragmatic cues in an attempt to identify which of them, if either, would lead children to normative interpretations. We found that young 3-year-old children inferred normativity without any normative language and without any pedagogical cues. The only cue they used was adult socialpragmatic marking of the action as familiar, as if it were a token of a well-known type (as opposed to performing it, as if inventing it on the spot). These results suggest that – in the absence of explicit normative language – young children interpret adult actions as normatively governed based mainly on the intentionality (perhaps signaling conventionality) with which they are performed. (shrink)

Children are routinely treated paternalistically. There are good reasons for this. Children are quite vulnerable. They are ill-equipped to meet their most basic needs, due, in part, to deficiencies in practical and theoretical reasoning and in executing their wishes. Children’s motivations and perceptions are often not congruent with their best interests. Consequently, raising children involves facilitating their best interests synchronically and diachronically. In practice, this requires caregivers to (in some sense) manage a child’s daily life. If (...) apposite, this management will focus partly on a child’s well-being. To be ably executed, an account of children’s well-being will need to be articulated. This chapter focuses on the nature of children’s well-being. It has five sections. The first section clarifies the focus. The second section examines some hurdles to articulating a view of children’s well-being. The third section evaluates some accounts of children’s well-being. The fourth section addresses the view that children possess features essential to them that make their lives on balance prudentially bad for them. The fifth section sums things up. (shrink)

This title was first published in 2003. This book critically examines the moral and political status of the child by a consideration of three interrelated questions: What rights if any does the child have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child do parents have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child does the state have? David Archard adopts three areas for particular discussion on the practical implications of the general theoretical issues: education, child protection (...) policy, and the medical treatment of children. Providing a clear legal context and a sharper, contemporary discussion of the question of rights, this book presents a clear introduction to the key issues in the moral and political status of children. (shrink)

Social norms have played a key role in the evolution of human cooperation, serving to stabilize prosocial and egalitarian behavior despite the self-serving motives of individuals. Young children’s behavior mostly conforms to social norms, as they follow adult behavioral directives and instructions. But it turns out that even preschool children also actively enforce social norms on others, often using generic normative language to do so. This behavior is not easily explained by individualistic motives; it is more likely a (...) result of children’s growing identification with their cultural group, which leads to prosocial motives for preserving its ways of doing things. (shrink)

John Tillson argues, on grounds of children’s well-being, that it is impermissible to teach them religious views. I defend a practice of pluralistically advocating religious views to children. As long as there are no monopolies of influence over children, and as long as advocates do not use coercion, deceit, or manipulation, children can greatly benefit without having their rational abilities subverted, or incurring undue risk to form false beliefs. This solution should counter, to some extent, both (...) perfectionist and antiperfectionist reasons against initiating children into religions. (shrink)

Children ranging from 3 to 5 years were introduced to two anthropomorphic robots that provided them with information about unfamiliar animals. Children treated the robots as interlocutors. They supplied information to the robots and retained what the robots told them. Children also treated the robots as informants from whom they could seek information. Consistent with studies of children's early sensitivity to an interlocutor's non-verbal signals, children were especially attentive and receptive to whichever robot displayed the (...) greater non-verbal contingency. Such selective information seeking is consistent with recent findings showing that although young children learn from others, they are selective with respect to the informants that they question or endorse. (shrink)

Three experiments investigating children's understanding of inference as a source of knowledge and beliefs were used to determine whether children use a theory in understanding the mind. A child watched while a sweet was placed in a box whereas a doll was merely given a message about which sweet had been transferred. Children were asked to judge whether the doll knew the colour of the sweet in the box and what colour the do6 would think the sweet (...) was. The main finding was that children tended to say the doll would hold a false belief about the colour of the sweet whenever the doll had not looked in the box. This result is easily reconciled with the theory view as a drive for coherence within the different aspects (knowledge and belier predictions) of the child's theory of mind. The result is contrary to the simulation view because children were generally good at‘inputting’or taking account of the relevant information (i.e. the doll's knowledge of the sweets’colours and the message to the doll), because children assessed their own beliefs quite differently from the doll's beliefs, and because contrary to the default assumptions set out by Harris (1991) children found it easier to assign a false belief to the doll than to assign a true belief. (shrink)

Parents appear to dominate their children in ways they cannot with other adults. While it might seem unavoidable, this issue raises important questions about whether children are unfree under parental authority. Republican theories of freedom, such as Philip Pettit’s influential account, look especially vulnerable. He claims that we are free only if non-dominated and so not under the arbitrary interference by others. Domination is a threat to freedom that republican freedom opposes for all. However, non-domination seems impossible to (...) avoid for everyone, most notably children, which is broadly accepted. If so, it is unclear why domination is permissible for some and not others if it is an evil for all to avoid. In this article, I argue that parental authority need not entail domination where it is subject to legitimacy constraints drawing on Pettit’s work on freedom and criminal justice that might also be endorsed by non-republicans. Republican children can enjoy non-domination from the cradle to the grave and this reveals how parental authority need not render children unfree for non-republicans as well. (shrink)

Children are vulnerable because they need care not only to survive but also to develop their basic physical, intellectual and emotional capacities. Since children depend heavily on care provided by a limited number of intimate caregivers, they are particularly vulnerable to those who provide their care, vulnerability that is exacerbated when they are neglected or abused. This essay analyzes children's emotional needs in order to identify when their inherent emotional vulnerability is pathogenically increased by maltreatment. It develops (...) a version of care theory informed by close attention to the vulnerability of both those who receive and those who give care. This approach provides a resource to identify pathogenic causes of children's emotional vulnerability and to make recommendations for change with respect to monitoring and supporting the care required to meet children's emotional needs. (shrink)

This article identifies four approaches to arguing for democracy, showing that none has an adequate way of supporting both full adult inclusion and the exclusion of children. I focus in Section 2 on the arguments of David Estlund and Thomas Christiano, showing that their arguments against guardianship call into question the exclusion of children from the franchise. In Section 3, I explain why the exclusion of children constitutes an injustice, and in the final section, I consider two (...) approaches to remedying that injustice. Key Words: justice • democracy • children. (shrink)

J. S. Russell has argued that it is morally permissible for children to participate in dangerous sports and that much of value can be gained from such participation. He attempts to justify children’s participation in dangerous sport with two arguments, which he calls the common sense view and the uncommon sense view, and I apply the basic reasons given in these general arguments to the specific case of justifying children’s participation in mixed martial arts (MMA). To safeguard (...) against wanton and gratuitous risk of great harm, Russell also includes some basic limitations for children’s participation in dangerous sports, and I use these limitations as a general framework for providing a number of additional constraints to render children’s MMA morally permissible. (shrink)

There is wide agreement that children have human rights, and that their human rights differ from those of adults. What explains this difference which is, at least at first glance, puzzling, given that human rights are meant to be universal? The puzzle can be dispelled by identifying what unites children’s and adults’ rights as human rights. Here I seek to answer the question of children’s human rights – that is, rights they have merely in virtue of being (...) human and of being children – by exploring how children’s interests are different from adults’, and how respect for children’s and adults’ moral status yields different practical requirements. If human rights protect interests, then children have many, but not all, of the human rights of adults, and, in addition, have some human rights that adults lack. I discuss the way in which children’s human rights, as I conceive of them here are, or fail to be, reflected in the law; as an illustration, I use the most important legal document listing children’s rights, namely the 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. (shrink)

The U.S. federal regulations require investigators conducting nonbeneficial research to obtain the assent of children who are capable of providing it. Unfortunately, there has been no analysis of which children are capable of assent or even what abilities ground the capacity to give assent. Why should investigators be required to obtain the positive agreement of some children, but not others, before enrolling them in research that does not offer a compensating potential for direct benefit? We argue that (...) the scope of children's research decision making should be based on the principles of respect for autonomy and nonmaleficence. These principles imply that the threshold for assent should be fixed at 14 years of age, and a dissent requirement should be adopted for all children in the context of nonbeneficial research. (shrink)

A philosophical discussion of children's well-being in which various existing views of well-being are discussed to determine their implications for children's well-being and a variety of views of children's well-being are considered and evaluated.

I characterize the main approaches to the moral consideration of children developed in the light of the argument from 'marginal' cases, and develop a more adequate strategy that provides guidance about the moral responsibilities adults have towards children. The first approach discounts the significance of children's potential and makes obligations to all children indirect, dependent upon interests others may have in children being treated well. The next approaches agree that the potential of children is (...) morally considerable, but disagree as to whether and why children with intellectual disabilities are morally considerable. These approaches explore the moral significance of intellectual capacities, species membership, the capacity for welfare, and the interests of others. I argue that relationships characterized by reciprocity of care are morally valuable, that both the potential to be in such relationships and the actuality of being in them are morally valuable, and that many children with significant intellectual disabilities have this potential. (shrink)

Progress in genetic and reproductive technology now offers us the possibility of choosing what kinds of children we do and don't have. Should we welcome this power, or should we fear its implications? There is no ethical question more urgent than this: we may be at a turning-point in the history of humanity. The renowned moral philosopher and best-selling author Jonathan Glover shows us how we might try to answer this question, and other provoking and disturbing questions to which (...) it leads. Surely parents owe it to their children to give them the best life they can? Increasingly we are able to reduce the number of babies born with disabilities and disorders. But there is a powerful new challenge to conventional thinking about the desirability of doing so: this comes from the voices of those who have these conditions. They call into question the very definition of disability. How do we justify trying to avoid bringing people like them into being? In 2002 a deaf couple used sperm donated by a friend with hereditary deafness to have a deaf baby: they took the view that deafness is not a disability, but a difference. Starting with the issues raised by this case, Jonathan Glover examines the emotive idea of 'eugenics', and the ethics of attempting to enhance people, for non-medical reasons, by means of genetic choices. Should parents be free, not only to have children free from disabilities, but to choose, for instance, the colour of their eyes or hair? This is no longer a distant prospect, but an existing power which we cannot wish away. What impact will such interventions have, both on the individuals concerned and on society as a whole? Should we try to make general improvements to the genetic make-up of human beings? Is there a central core of human nature with which we must not interfere? This beautifully clear book is written for anyone who cares about the rights and wrongs of parents' choices for their children, anyone who is concerned about our human future. Glover handles these uncomfortable questions in a controversial but always humane and sympathetic manner. (shrink)

Orson Scott Card and his Ender Series have had a profound impact on the genre of contemporary science fiction, meriting an academic analysis of some of his more theoretical ideas. I have chosen to analyze his concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations found in Xenocide and Children of the Mind through the lens of international relations, sociological, and political theory, in order to bring nuance to an underdeveloped theory that many non-academics may be familiar with. Ultimately, we must conclude (...) that Card’s concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations is too stagnant and does not account for social and hegemonic change, which influences the justifications of why these “nations” may be considered “Center” in the first place. (shrink)

Examines how forty children, Catholics, Baptists, Jews, and Hindus, picture God, and shows what factors influence their spiritual perceptions.

Children are often regarded as less morally blameworthy when they fail to control their behavior. If one regards failures of self-control as failures to do what one knows or judges to be best, then one must ask whether children are less blameworthy even when they “know better.” The author argues that children are less blameworthy for these failures because it is harder for them to exercise self-control. She argues that one important reason that it is harder for (...) children to control themselves is that children are still in the process of developing what she calls “narrative capacity.” Her account of this capacity is informed by both psychological and philosophical accounts. The chapter spells out the characteristic features of narrative capacity and illustrates how these are required for self-control. (shrink)

Children have always been an essential part of politics. However, the political struggles in which children are involved are rarely, if at all, for the equality of children as such. Struggles for the benefit of children are nearly always led by adults, focusing on children’s rights in an adult-dominated world. In this paper, I develop the possibility of Children’s political struggle for equality, informed by the political philosophy of Jacque Rancière. I present the educational (...) backdrop for Rancière’s claim that all intelligences are equal, and argue that it implies that children are by nature equal to adults, hence also equally capable of political action. By demonstrating that children are a “part of those who have no part” in the existing sociopolitical order, I examine the possibility of a collective political subject of children, and articulate the implications child politics may have. (shrink)

Children aged 7 and 11 years were interviewed about death in the context of two different narratives. Each narrative described the death of a grandparent but one narrative provided a secular context whereas the other provided a religious context. Following each narrative, children were asked to judge whether various bodily and mental processes continue to function after death, and to justify their judgment. Children displayed two different conceptions of death. They often acknowledged that functioning ceases at death (...) and offered appropriate biological justifications for that judgment. However, they also claimed that functioning continues after death and offered appropriate religious justifications. The tendency to claim that functioning continues after death was more frequent among older children than younger children, more frequent in the context of the religious narrative as opposed to the secular narrative and more frequent with respect to mental processes than bodily processes. Particularly among older children, two distinct conceptions of death appear to co-exist: a biological conception in which death implies the cessation of living processes and a metaphysical conception in which death marks the beginning of the afterlife. (shrink)

The traditional liberal view on conflicts between care for wellbeing and respect for choice and desire is that we should look to degrees of competence and voluntariness to determine which moral imperative should take priority. This view has likely influenced the common view that children’s choices should be considered only to the extent that this promotes their future autonomy and helps us determine their best interests. I reject both the general traditional liberal view and its application to children. (...) Competence and voluntariness, as well as maturity, are at best proxies for what really matters, which is wellbeing, choice and desire. We typically have reason to respect children’s choices, irrespective of any further positive consequences. If we should more often make children do what they do not want to do, this is mainly because, though we should care about respecting their choices, we should care even more about their wellbeing and future autonomy. (shrink)

Hope has been neglected as a topic by philosophers interested in families, children, and children's autonomy. Hope may be confused with adjacent phenomena, such as optimism and wishful thinking. However, hope, when understood to involve goals, exploration of pathways to achieving those goals, and motivation to explore the pathways, is necessary for autonomy. It is also importantly related to children's resilience in response to challenges and stressors. In the course of explaining what I take autonomy to involve, (...) why I think children can have areas of local autonomy, and connections between hope, autonomy and resilience, I examine evidence that supports my claims about these connections. I then conclude with a brief discussion of implications of these connections for social policy, especially in the educational context, and for personal interactions with children. (shrink)

I have argued elsewhere that children have a moral right to be loved. Mhairi Cowden challenges my arguments. Among other things, Cowden believes that children do not need to be loved. In this paper, I explain why Cowden’s arguments fail and offer additional evidence for why children need to be loved.

Informing children about their HIV status is a complex challenge and the most difficult part for parents and health care providers. As more children with HIV reaching adolescence and adulthood, the...

We examined how children's strategy choices in solving complex subtraction problems are related to grade and to variations in problem complexity. In two studies, third- and fifth-grade children (N≈160 each study) solved multi-digit subtraction problems (e.g., 34–18) and described their solution strategies. In the first experiment, strategy selection was investigated by means of a free-choice paradigm, whereas in the second study a discrete-choice approach was implemented. In both experiments, analyses of strategy repertoire indicated that third-grade children were (...) more likely to report less-efficient strategies (i.e., counting) and relied more on the right-to-left solution algorithm compared to fifth-grade children who more often used efficient memory-based retrieval and conceptually-based left-to-right (i.e., decomposition) strategies. Nevertheless, all strategies were reported or selected by both older and younger children and strategy use varied with problem complexity and presentation format for both age groups. These results supported the overlapping waves model of strategy development and provide detailed information about patterns of strategy choice on complex subtraction problems. (shrink)

Although there is now a large and sophisticated literature on ethical or moral matters relating to family immigration and immigration enforcement, the intersection of these topics has not been greatly explored. This is unfortunate, as particular and difficult normative issues arise in relation to immigration enforcement when applied to children and to families where some members are unauthorized migrants and others are citizens or authorized migrants (“mixed-status” families). This chapter addresses this deficit, explaining some of these special difficulties and (...) providing suggestions as to how they may be addressed. (the file below is a final pre-publication version. Please cite to the published version.). (shrink)

This article addresses how bodily integrity has been mobilised in the context of genital cutting of male infants and the extent to which the concept is taken into account in legal decision-making in the United Kingdom. While bioethicists have debated whether interventions on children's bodies are more appropriately determined on the basis of hypothetical consent or in the child's best interest, it is clear that in law the relevant test is whether interventions are in the child's best interest. As (...) the issue of nonconsensual genital cutting of infants has become more contested, courts have been asked to adjudicate on the best interests of infants in situations where their caregivers disagree about procedures. Although this body of jurisprudence remains (surprisingly) small, in this article we argue that, while there are now discernible trends in such cases (e.g. deferring decision-making until the child has the requisite capacity to decide, engaging with certain human rights norms), too often judicial reasoning about a child's best interests remains largely empty of reasoned content, and in certain respects is regressing. Using the recent case of Re P to exemplify this logic, and drawing on our previous work advocating the value of embodied integrity, we argue that judges should adopt a more substantive framework of values in judging the child's corporeal and other interests in such cases. This would move best interests assessments beyond a mere formalistic exercise and lead to better reasoned legal judgements. (shrink)

A dilemma exists when a doctor is faced with a child or young person who refuses medically indicated treatment. The Gillick case has been interpreted by many to mean that a child of sufficient age and intelligence could validly consent or refuse consent to treatment. Recent decisions of the Court of Appeal on a child's refusal of medical treatment have clouded the issue and undermined the spirit of the Gillick decision and the Children Act 1989. It is now the (...) case that a child patient whose competence is in doubt will be found rational if he or she accepts the proposal to treat but may be found incompetent if he or she disagrees. Practitioners are alerted to the anomalies now exhibited by the law on the issue of children's consent and refusal. The impact of the decisions from the perspectives of medicine, ethics, and the law are examined. Practitioners should review each case of child care carefully and in cases of doubt seek legal advice. (shrink)

Research relating to patients’ views of the good nurse has mainly focused on the perspectives of adult patients, with little exploring the perceptions of children. This article presents findings from a qualitative study that explored views of the good nurse from the perspective of hospitalized children. The aims of the study were threefold: to remedy a gap in the literature; to identify characteristics of the good nurse from the perspective of children in hospital; and to inform (...) class='Hi'>children’s nursing practice. Twenty-two children were interviewed using an adapted ‘draw and write’ technique. Five themes relating to children’s views of the good nurse emerged from the analysis: communication; professional competence; safety; professional appearance; and virtues. Each of these will be discussed in relation to good nurse literature and recommendations made for children’s nursing practice. (shrink)

Michael Burroughs and Deborah Tollefsen (2016) claim that children are subject to widespread testimonial injustice. They argue that empirical data shows that children are prejudicially accorded less epistemic credibility in forensic contexts, and that this in turn shows that the same is true in broader contexts. While I agree that there is indeed testimonial injustice against children, I argue that Burroughs and Tollefsen exaggerate its severity and extent, by exaggerating children’s testimonial reliability. Firstly, the empirical data (...) do not quite support their claim about children’s performance in forensic contexts. Secondly, while they advocate a relational conception of children’s agency which emphasizes the role of adults in realizing their testimonial abilities, Burroughs and Tollefsen miss the full implications of such a conception for our evaluation of children’s credibility, and for our behavior towards them in testimonial contexts. Thirdly, they underestimate the significance of children’s limited general knowledge. (shrink)

Egalitarian theories assume, without defending it, the view that the costs of children should be shared between non-parents and parents. This standard position is called into question by the Parental Provision view. Drawing on the familiar idea that people should be held responsible for the consequences of their choices, the Parental Provision view holds that under certain conditions egalitarian justice requires parents to pay for the full costs of their children, as it would be unfair for non-parents to (...) bear the negative externalities of others’ choices to have children. This article examines closely the Parental Provision view and argues that various possible justifications for it are unsuccessful. In so doing, it brings to light respects in which the choice to have and rear children is special and may not be treated as being on a par with other choices for which we think people should be held responsible. (shrink)

This paper discusses children's right to play and its bioethical importance for children affected by war. Against the background of the current military conflicts, it analyses physical, psychological, and institutional factors that limit children's right to play in a situation involving armed conflict. Considering that the lack of institutional support of play for children affected by war constitutes a failure to fulfil our societal and political obligation under Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the (...) Rights of the Child, this paper analyses the understanding of play adopted in this legal instrument. In line with the distinctions made in the Convention, it discusses the importance of play for children's life and survival, for their health and well‐being, as well as for the recovery of trauma experienced by children affected by armed conflict. It thereby aims to contribute to the recognition and protection of this right on the grounds of bioethics and healthcare. (shrink)

This paper considers the often-expressed fear that medical research may use children merely as means, and not respect them as ends in themselves – especially insofar as they are deemed less able to consent than adults. The main focus is on large-scale genetic, socio-medical and epidemiological research. The theoretical starting point of the paper is that to be treated as an end in oneself is to be regarded as – and to act as – a participant in cooperative endeavours. (...) This participatory status is certainly connected with individual authority to consent and dissent; and there is no doubt that consent plays an important role when adults participate in many research projects. However, insofar as consent is located within structures of human cooperation, the authority to consent is not a straightforward privilege. Rather, consent is bound up with responsibility for one's choices and commitment to shared terms of cooperation. Given this understanding, it is argued that consent should not be our principal concern when we involve children in research. This is not because of children's (possible) incompetence to consent as such, but rather because children are still learning how to respect and assess the cooperative terms involved in our institutional lives. Instead, our leading concern should be with the terms regulating their involvement in research. Given suitable safeguards, research is one way in which children may learn what it is to bear responsibilities and to act as an end in oneself – that is, to cooperate with others on reasonable terms and for worthy ends. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that children can infer causal relations from patterns of events. However, what appear to be cases of causal inference may simply reduce to children recognizing relevant associations among events, and responding based on those associations. To examine this claim, in Experiments 1 and 2, children were introduced to a “blicket detector,” a machine that lit up and played music when certain objects were placed upon it. Children observed patterns of contingency between objects and (...) the machine's activation that required them to use indirect evidence to make causal inferences. Critically, associative models either made no predictions, or made incorrect predictions about these inferences. In general, children were able to make these inferences, but some developmental differences between 3- and 4-year-olds were found. We suggest that children's causal inferences are not based on recognizing associations, but rather that children develop a mechanism for Bayesian structure learning. Experiment 3 explicitly tests a prediction of this account. Children were asked to make an inference about ambiguous data based on the base rate of certain events occurring. Four-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds were able to make this inference. (shrink)

It is a precept of commonsense morality that parents have permissions to be partial toward their own children in various ways: they are permitted to act in a variety of ways that favor the interests of their own children. But how are such permissions to be reconciled with more general principles of justice? In this article, I discuss this question as it arises for one kind of liberal egalitarian theory of justice. Given their robust commitment to an ideal (...) of equality, such theories face prima facie difficulties in accommodating the commonsense permissions of parental partiality. After sketching the contours of the apparent conflict between equality and parental partiality, I survey some of the ways in which some writers have attempted to reconcile equality and parental partiality, and I criticize these reconciliation proposals, which in different ways subordinate a concern for equality to a concern for parental partiality. I then suggest a different direction for reconciliation, which subordinates a concern for partiality to a concern for equality. This alternative reconciliation strategy, I argue, deserves to be taken seriously by liberal egalitarians; whether it is the most plausible way to reconcile equality and parental partiality depends on one’s view about the moral weight of people’s interest in parenting. (shrink)

Children are treated differently compared to adults in many domains, including in health care, education, employment, and criminal justice. The differential treatment of children—to adults, and in the case of younger children and adolescents, to each other—makes it both practically and theoretically important to examine the justification of when and why this treatment is permissible. Because the justifications of children’s differential treatment typically appeal to foundational normative considerations—matters of autonomy, responsibility, and well-being—they provoke considerable controversy and (...) disagreement in law and ethics, especially, though not exclusively in the contexts of health care, sexual relations, and criminal justice. Consenting Children brings together philosophers and academic lawyers to grapple with these matters and domains and to share disciplinary and interdisciplinary insights and understanding. The volume’s contributors engage in deep and fruitful discussions of children’s consent and responsibility, decision-making capacity and best interests, as well as the role, powers, and duties of parents and state institutions. The volume lays the groundwork for future engagement in the legal and philosophical literature with the controversies raised by children’s autonomy, responsibility, and well-being, and the myriad interactions between them concerning children’s consent. (shrink)

A conversational implicature is an inference that consists in attributing to a speaker an implicit meaning that goes beyond the explicit linguistic meaning of an utterance. This paper experimentallyinvestigates scalar implicature, a paradigmatic case of implicature in which a speaker's use of a term like Some indicates that the speaker had reasons not to use a more informative one from the samescale, e.g. All; thus, Some implicates Not all. Pragmatic theorists like Grice would predict that a pragmatic interpretation is determined (...) only after its explicit, logical meaning is incorporated (e.g. whereSome means at least one). The present work aims to developmentally unpack this prediction by showing how younger, albeit competent, reasoners initially treat a relatively weak term logically beforebecoming aware of its pragmatic potential. Three experiments are presented. Experiment 1 presents a modal reasoning scenario offering an exhaustive set of conclusions; critical among these isparticipants' evaluation of a statement expressing Might be x when the context indicates that the stronger Must be x is true. The conversationally-infelicitous Might be x can be understood logically(e.g. as compatible with Must) or pragmatically (as exclusive to must). Results from five-, seven-, and nine-year-olds as well as adults revealed that a) seven-year-olds are the youngest to demonstratemodal competence overall and that; b) seven- and nine-year-olds treat the infelicitous Might logically significantly more often than adults do. Experiment 2 showed how training with the modal taskcan suspend the implicatures for adults. Experiment 3 provides converging evidence of the developmental pragmatic effect with the French existential quantifier Certains (Some). Whilelinguistically-sophisticated children (eight- and ten-year-olds olds) typically treat Certains as compatible with Tous (All), adults are equivocal. These results, which are consistent with unanticipatedfindings in classic developmental papers, reveal a consistent ordering in which representations of weak scalar terms tend to be treated logically by young competent participants and morepragmatically by older ones. This work is also relevant to the treatment of scalar implicatures in the reasoning literature. (shrink)

Researchers working on children's moral understanding maintain that the child's capacity to distinguish morality from convention shows that children regard moral violations as objectively wrong. Education in the moral domain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). However, one traditional way to cast the issue of objectivism is to focus not on conventionality, but on whether moral properties depend on our responses, as with properties like icky and fun. This paper argues that the moral/conventional task is inadequate for assessing whether (...) class='Hi'>children regard moral properties as response-dependent. Unfortunately, children's understanding of response-dependent properties has been neglected in recent research. Two experiments are reported showing that children are more likely to treat properties like fun and icky as response-dependent than moral properties like good and bad. Hence, this helps support the claim that children are moral objectivists. (shrink)

_The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness_, first published in 1944, is considered one of the most profound and relevant works by the influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and certainly the fullest statement of his political philosophy. Written and first read during the prolonged, tragic world war between totalitarian and democratic forces, Niebuhr’s book took up the timely question of how democracy as a political system could best be defended. Most proponents of democracy, Niebuhr claimed, were “ (...) class='Hi'>children of light,” who had optimistic but naïve ideas about how society could be rid of evil and governed by enlightened reason. They needed, he believed, to absorb some of the wisdom and strength of the “children of darkness,” whose ruthless cynicism and corrupt, anti-democratic politics should otherwise be repudiated. He argued for a prudent, liberal understanding of human society that took the measure of every group’s self-interest and was chastened by a realistic understanding of the limits of power. It is in the foreword to this book that he wrote, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” This edition includes a new introduction by the theologian and Niebuhr scholar Gary Dorrien in which he elucidates the work’s significance and places it firmly into the arc of Niebuhr’s career. (shrink)

Twenty-four children (aged 5 months to 18 years) who were admitted to a university hospital were observed for a total of 135 hours with the aim of describing their degree of participation in decisions concerning their own care. Grading of their participation was made by using a 5-point scale. An assessment was also made of what was considered as optimal participation in each situation. The results indicate that children are not always allowed to participate in decision making to (...) the extent that is considered optimal. In no case was it judged that a child participated in or was forced to make a decision that was too difficult for the child. The interactions between children, parents and staff were also described in connection with discussions and decision-making processes. This showed that parents do not always support their children in difficult situations and that health care staff often inform children about what is going to happen without presenting alternatives or asking for their views. Staff may, however, find themselves facing an ethical conflict in deciding between supporting a child’s view or following hospital routine. It is of great importance that children are looked upon as potentially autonomous individuals and that staff members realize that one of their core duties is to facilitate children’s participation in decision making concerning their health care. (shrink)

This book deals with themes concerning religious education and the spirituality of children. Throughout the seventeen chapters, the book stimulates a scholarly discussion about children and theology. The book makes clear that classical Christian theology can benefit from taking seriously children's voices and reflections about children. The volume demonstrates how nuanced and interdisciplinary reflections can be relevant for Christian and social practices of adults with children and how these practices can influence theology. This volume asks (...) the following questions: - Why is it important that we hear the 'voices of children' and what does this mean for how we treat children and relate to them? - What do the 'voices of children' express? How do children experience society and, in particular, religion, and what do they have to say about it? - What do the 'voices of children' mean for theology, ethics and religious education? In what way can our theology change when we see reality from the perspective of children? This book consists of five parts. In the first part the reader receives an overview of the current challenges concerning children and spirituality. The two chapters of this part offer an introduction to contemporary thinking about children, theology and spirituality and the place of 'children's voices' within this scope. The second part refers to biblical sources for contemporary theological reflection on children. The third part contains pedagogical and ethical reflections on children, as well as a view from practical theology about children in the world and the responsibility of churches. This third part looks mainly at children in relation to society, both in the past and in the present. The fourth part focuses on children living in the family, which is seen as a domestic church. The fifth part takes up the theme of children's spirituality again, showing children's own spiritual reflection and ways of theologizing with children in church and family contexts, by communication, literature and all forms of religious education and/or catechesis. (shrink)

Is it possible that children experience something we could judge as the sublime? Some pivotal conjectures have been elicited to positively answer these questions; however, this general topic still stands in need of fuller theoretical and empirical insights. Since taking up this challenge may have important implications in the ever-expanding field of aesthetic education, in this article I will give a philosophical account of the experience of the sublime in 8-10 children, identifying both its plau- sible components and (...) its markers, which opens up future empirical inquiries. (shrink)

Research on young children in environmental education (EE) has focused on unstructured play in, or experiencing, nature. Little attention has been paid to young children’s stewardship efforts, or to the relation of such efforts to young children’s learning and capacity to contribute to their communities and local nature. This perspectives paper draws on the first author’s experience guiding pre-k and kindergarten children (4–6 years old) in outdoor educational projects in Santo Domingo (SD), Dominican Republic, in which (...) the children produced a park guide and a short film. In addition to becoming resources for the local community, these products are an example of children’s civic contributions. In “return on investment” language, guiding young children in outdoor experiences and reflecting on the experience represent the investment and the park guide and other products, and importantly, children’s recognition of their ability to make contributions to their community, represent the return on investment. Based on our observations that young children can make significant contributions to their communities when given the opportunity, this perspectives paper argues for a research agenda and investment in opportunities for young children to contribute to their socio-ecological communities. To support our perspective, we first review and critique the prevailing and emerging paradigms of early childhood EE, following which we briefly describe the Santo Domingo (SD) project, and close by integrating past work with the first author’s experience to argue for the importance of including young children in stewardship efforts. (shrink)