Aryeh Goldberg compellingly argues for a Narrative Coherence Standard (NCS) to bolster existing methods of assessing patients' mental capacity. But his account fails to distinguish between the cognitive abilities of children and adults; consequently, worries may be raised about the scope of the NCS, in particular when we consider child patients. In this article, I argue the NCS cannot plausibly apply to children. Since children's self-conception does not arrive fully formed — but rather is a product of both incomplete cognitive (...) development and socializing factors — I claim children may not possess a sufficiently intimate knowledge of self, and therefore a sufficiently coherent sense of self, as Goldberg demands. Therefore, we should either revise the NCS to accommodate children, adopt an incremental view of consent, or revert to the relevant form of the MacArthur competence criteria to establish children’s capacity to consent. (shrink)

The child’s right to an open future aims at protecting the autonomy of the mature person into which a child will normally develop. The justification of state interventions into parental decisions which unduly restrict the options of the prospective adult has to address the problem that the value of autonomy is highly contested in modern pluralist societies. The article argues that the modern majority culture provides young adults with many more options than traditionalist religious communities. However, the options that can (...) be chosen in faith groups, such as the Amish, do not constitute a subset of the options available in the wider society. Therefore, state policies which pursue the goal of providing every child with the greatest possible set of options cannot be based on a neutralist version of political liberalism. The advocates of a child’s right to an open future must rely on a perfectionist version of liberalism which draws on the ideal of leading an autonomous life. Since liberal perfectionism has problematic implications, the article defends a neutralist position that largely refrains from state interference with the educational authority of fundamentalist religious communities. (shrink)

Many liberals and secularists believe that religious schooling should not be publicly funded or that it should simply be banned. Challenging those views, I claim that although liberal states may refuse to fund and may even ban certain illiberal separate religious schools, it is impermissible, for distinctively liberal reasons, to completely ban publicly funded religious schooling. I will however argue that providing religious instruction within common public schools is more desirable than having separate religious schools. I argue that providing religious (...) instruction within common public schools is a better way to balance the educational interests of parents, children and society than banning religious schooling altogether; authorizing it but refusing to fund it; or having publicly funded separate religious schools. (shrink)

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics, I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this (...) understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement. (shrink)

This paper explores the debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists in the context of children. It suggests that the most influential and compelling arguments in favour of anti-perfectionism are adult-centric. It does this by considering four leading reasons given in favour of anti-perfectionism and shows that none apply in the case of children. In so doing, the paper defends a perfectionist account of upbringing from the attacks made against perfectionism more generally. Furthermore, because the refutation of the various anti-perfectionist arguments are (...) made exclusively dealing with children, the paper suggests that the perfectionist view of upbringing is compatible with anti-perfectionist restrictions on dealing with adults. This dual view combining perfectionism for children and anti-perfectionism for adults is referred to as restricted perfectionism. (shrink)

Für viele liberale Denker fällt die religiöse Erziehung der eigenen Kinder unter die Erziehungsautorität der Eltern. Das heißt, dass die Eltern für ihre Kinder entscheiden sollen, ob Letztere religiös erzogen werden und welche Religion hierbei unter Umständen zugrunde liegen soll. In diesem Aufsatz wird ein Argument von Matthew Clayton kritisch diskutiert, das dieses traditionell liberale Verständnis der Erziehungsautorität infrage stellt. Clayton geht von Rawls‘ Rechtfertigungsmodell legitimer Autorität aus, nach dem staatliche Autorität durch öffentlich zugängliche Gründe zu rechtfertigen ist. Clayton wendet (...) dieses sogenannte Prinzip der Legitimität auf den Bereich der Familie an, woraus für ihn folgt, dass die religiöse Erziehung von Kindern auf einer illegitimen Ausübung von Autorität beruht, wenn Eltern ihre Kinder so beeinflussen wollen, dass diese die von ihnen bevorzugten religiösen Überzeugungen annehmen. Für Clayton muss die legitime Ausübung der Erziehungsautorität der Eltern auf die zukünftige Zustimmung, seinen retrospektiven „consent“, Bezug nehmen. Am Ende des Aufsatzes wird – unter Berücksichtigung von Clayton-Kritikern – untersucht, ob es Formen religiöser Erziehung gibt, die vereinbar sind mit dem Prinzip der Legitimität. (shrink)

On what basis should we judge whether a parent’s medical decision for their child is morally acceptable? In a recent article, Johan Bester attempts to answer this question by defending a version of the Best Interest Standard for parental decision making. The purpose of this paper is to identify a number of problems faced by Bester’s version of BIS and to suggest ways to redress these problems. Accordingly, we intend to advance the project of formulating a method for guiding parents’ (...) medical decision making for their children. We argue that Bester’s standard fails to accommodate the autonomy of the child and that his criteria for assessing the reasonableness of the parents’ argument for their decision is too weak. We conclude that properly addressing these worries renders his test otiose and that it ought to be replaced with the three commonly held principles of bioethics—the principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence—and a standard of reasonableness. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate the general and special obligations of parents with respect to the shaping of consumption habits, from a liberal egalitarian perspective. The article argues that, in virtue of them being well placed to shape the next generation's consumption habits, parents have a duty of justice to prevent their children from developing expensive consumption habits in order to enable them to leave their fair share to others. In virtue of the special relationship they have (...) with their children, parents have a duty of care, and this may also require parents to prevent their children from developing expensive consumption habits. Then the article discusses whether and under which conditions these duties hold in unjust circumstances, where a consumerist ethos is predominant and where other parents and educational agents do not collaborate effectively. (shrink)

This article offers an account of the information condition on morally valid consent in the context of sexual relations. The account is grounded in rights. It holds that a person has a sufficient amount of information to give morally valid consent if, and only if, she has all the information to which she has a claim-right. A person has a claim-right to a piece of information if, and only if, a. it concerns a deal-breaker for her; b. it does not (...) concern something that her partner has a strong interest in protecting from scrutiny, sufficient to generate a privilege-right; c.i. her partner is aware of the information to which her deal-breaker applies; or c.ii. her partner ought to be held responsible for the fact that he is not aware of the information to which her deal-breaker applies; and finally, d. she has not waived or forfeited her claim-right. Although we present this account in the context of sexual relations, we believe a virtue of the account is that it can be easily translated into other contexts. (shrink)

This article proposes an approach to educational distribution that attempts to minimise enduring tensions among conflicting values. At the foundation of this approach is a threshold of educational adequacy based on what is needed for citizens to participate in a democratic society. This threshold is justified because it minimises conflict with parental rights and because it better manages ‘the bottomless pit’ problem of educational distribution. This threshold is then modified to stipulate that, after the threshold has been reached, public resources (...) should be distributed equally across students from all backgrounds. While this modification is essential to sending messages of equal citizenship, it also leaves a ‘moral residue’ because it allows wealthy parents to invest greater private resources in their children, thus preserving their children's competitive advantage. Minimising this harm requires policy mechanisms outside of schools that more aggressively break the link between educational outcomes, success in market competition, and social goods. Something ‘external’ to educational institutions is necessary, then, for the achievement of educational justice. (shrink)

If D commits a wrong against V, D typically incurs a corrective duty to V. But how should we respond if V has false beliefs about whether she is harmed by D’s wrong? There are two types of cases we must consider: those in which V is not harmed but she mistakenly believes that she is those in which V is harmed but she mistakenly believes that she is not. I canvass three views: The Objective View, The Subjective View and (...) The Mixed View. The Objective View holds that V’s claim depends on the correct account of harm, rather than her false beliefs, and so D has a duty to offer damages to V in but not in in order to compensate her. The Subjective View holds that, for broadly anti-perfectionist reasons, V’s claim depends on her sincere beliefs, even if they are mistaken, and so D has a duty to compensate V in but not in. The Mixed View holds that we should defer to her beliefs in but not in, so D has a duty to compensate her in both cases. In this article, I argue that we should accept The Mixed View. (shrink)

Almost everyone accepts that parents must provide a good enough upbringing in order to retain custodial rights over children, but little has been said about how that level should be set. In this paper, I examine ways of specifying a good enough upbringing. I argue that the two dominant ways of setting this level, the Best Interests and Abuse and Neglect Views, are mistaken. I defend the Dual Comparative View, which holds that an upbringing is good enough when shortfalls from (...) the best alternative upbringing in terms of the child's interests are no more significant than the parents' interest. (shrink)

In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argues that self-respect is ‘perhaps the most important’ primary good, and that its status as such gives crucial support to controversial ideas like the lexical priority of liberty. Given the importance of these ideas for Rawls, it should be no surprise that they have attracted much critical attention. In response to these critics I give a defense of self-respect that grounds its importance in Rawls’s moral conception of the person. I show that this (...) understanding of self-respect goes well beyond giving support to the lexical priority of liberty, also supporting Rawls’s still more controversial view of public reason. On my account, taking self-respect seriously requires the coercive enforcement of public reason. This is a novel argument for public reason, in that it grounds the idea in justice as fairness and mandates its coercive enforcement. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Alan Patten’s theory of neutrality of treatment. It argues that the theory assumes an inadequate conception of personal autonomy that undermines its plausibility. Because of this assumption the theory is unable to account for various configurations of power that work against personal autonomy. However, I suggest that the theory can resolve the problem by developing and reinterpreting its conception of autonomy and introducing an additional strategy for addressing the power misbalances that result from the market-based interactions (...) between individuals and their conceptions of the good. (shrink)