Program Phil Childhood 2017 Final July II

Philosophy and Childhood
University of Salzburg
13 & 14 July 2017
Keynote Speakers
S. Matthew Liao (New York)
Amy Mullin (Toronto)
Adam Swift (Warwick)
www.philosophy-childhood.org
Philosophy and Childhood 2
Organizing Committee
Monika Betzler is Professor of Practical Philosophy and holds the Chair of Phi-
losophy V, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt (LMU) Munich.
Alexander Bagattini is a Postdoc at the Chair of Philosophy V, Ludwig-Maximi-

lians-Universitt (LMU) Munich.
Mar Cabezas is a Postdoc at the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, Uni-
versity of Salzburg, and works in the research project Social Justice and Child
Poverty, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P26480.
Gunter Graf is a Postdoc at the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, Uni-
versity of Salzburg, and works in the research project Social Justice and Child
Poverty, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P26480.
Gottfried Schweiger works as a Senior Scientist at the Centre for Ethics and
Poverty Research, University of Salzburg, and is the Principal Investigator of
the research project Social Justice and Child Poverty, funded by the Austrian
Science Fund (FWF): P26480.
Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research

The Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research (CEPR) of the University of Salz-
burg is an interdisciplinary research institution with multiple integrations in
national and international institutions and networks. It is dedicated to the
research of poverty and social exclusion, in particluar in relation to questions
of ethics and philosophy. The CEPR has currently members with backgrounds
in social geography, political science, theology, history, literature studies, and
philosophy.
The CEPR carries out (externally funded) research projects, organizes work-
shops and conferences, both for researchers as well as practitioners and policy
makers, and its members regularly publish research papers and peer-reviewed
edited volumes, special issues and monographs as well as reports and books
aimed at a lay audience.
Since the 2013 the CEPR organizes the annual Salzburg Conference in In-
terdisciplinary Poverty Research on changing focus themes. In past years con-
ferences covered the topics of taxation (2013), child poverty (2016), absolu-
te poverty in Europe (2015), and ethical issues in poverty alleviation (2014).
These conferences are interdisciplinary and open to all interested researchers,
practitioners and policy makers. They aim to bring together current research
3 Philosophy and Childhood
on poverty, inequality and social exclusion and to discuss policies and other
measures of poverty alleviation.
The CEPR organizes also an annual Workshop in Philosophy and Poverty.
In 2016 Monique Deveaux (Guelph) was the invited speaker, in 2017 H.P.P.
[Hennie] Ltter (Johannesburg).
Find out more: www.povertyresearch.org
Netzwerk Philosophie & Kindheit

The Netzwerk Philosophie & Kindheit [Network Philosophy & Childhood] was
established in 2014 and brings together German-speaking philosophers and
interested scholars from other disciplines working on philosophical questions
related to childhood. The network has currently more than thirty members
from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
The network is open to all interested colleagues and holds a yearly work-
shop on changing topics, which is organized as part of the annual Tagung fr
Praktische Philosophie [Conference on Practical Philosophy]. The aim of the
network is to foster collaboration and to provide a forum for discussion and
to share news. The network has its own blog and mailing list, which everyone
interested in the philosophy of childhood can join, and post messages to. The
network is coordinated by Gunter Graf (University of Salzburg) and Gottfried
Schweiger (University of Salzburg), and welcomes new members.
Project: Social Justice and Child Poverty

The research project Social Justice and Child Poverty examines child poverty
from a social justice perspective. In three interrelated research areas, it aims at
answering three key questions: What special content does social justice have
for children? What kinds of violations of social justice are inherent in child po-
verty? Who are the agents having the obligations to alleviate child poverty and
secure social justice for those children in poverty? All three of these questions
are of high social and philosophical importance and to a great extent unanswe-
red in contemporary philosophical research. While there is a growing literature
on children as well as poverty from different normative perspectives, the topic
of child poverty is nearly non-existent in philosophy as one of its own right.
The research project produced several peer-reviewed publications and fun-
ded workshops and conferences.
The project is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P26480 and car-
ried out at the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research, University of Salzburg.
Find out more: www.child-poverty.org
Venue
The conference will take place at the Unipark Nonntal building of the Universi-
ty of Salzburg just next to the city center of Salzburg.
The address of the Unipark Nonntal is Erzabt-Klotz-Strae 1, 5020 Salzburg.
Multiple bus lines (3, 5, 8, 20 and 25) stop next to it.
The registration, keynote and panels talks will be in the seminar rooms 4.101
and 4.102, both located on the 4th floor of the Unipark (on the rooftop).
Conference Dinner
Thursday, 13 July 2017, 20.00
Restaurant Arge Beisl, Ulrike-Gschwandtner-Strae 5, 5020 Salzburg
Meeting Point: in front of the conference venue at 19.45!
(The confernce dinner is not included in the conference fee!)

Keynote Speakers
S. Matthew Liao
holds the Arthur Zitrin Chair in Bioethics and
is the Director for The Center for Bioethics at
New York University. From 2006 to 2009, he
was the Deputy Director and James Martin
Senior Research Fellow in the Program on the
Ethics of the New Biosciences in the Faculty
of Philosophy at Oxford University.
He is the author of The Right to Be Loved
(Oxford University Press 2015) and edited
Moral Brains. The Neuroscience of Morality
(Oxford University Press 2016). In May 2007,
he founded Ethics Etc, a group blog for dis-
cussing contemporary philosophical issues in
ethics and related areas. He is interested in a
wide range of issues including ethics, episte-
mology, metaphysics, moral psychology, and
bioethics.
Amy Mullin
is professor of philosophy at the University of
Toronto Mississauga. She is the author of Re-
conceiving Pregnancy and Childcare: Ethics,
Experience and Reproductive Labor (Cam-
bridge University Press, 2005) along with nu-
merous articles on children, parenting, and
ethics in books and journals such as Ethical
Th eory and Moral Practice, Journal of Social
Philosophy , and Hypatia. In addition to as-
king about the responsibility individuals and
groups have to meet childrens needs and the
grounds for these moral expectations, she is
interested in questions about childrens res-
ponsibilities and in development of childrens
autonomy.
Adam Swift
is a political theorist with some training in
sociology. Since January 2013, he has been
Professor of Political Theory in the Depart-
ment of Politics and International Studies at
the University of Warwick. He is a member of
Warwicks Centre for Ethics, Law and Public
Affairs.
His latest book is Family Values: The Ethics
of Parent-Child Relationships (with Harry
Brighouse, Princeton University Press 2014).
You can hear him talking about Family Valu-
es on Philosophy Bites and The Philosophers
Zone. You can see him talking about it here.
Currently his main research project is on Faith
Schools: Principles and Policies (with Matthew
Clayton, Andrew Mason and Ruth Wareham,
funded by the Spencer Foundation).
Keynote Talks
Chair: Gunter Graf, Room: Room: 4.102, 4th Floor
S. Matthew Liao (New York)

Is there a duty to adopt over having IVF treatments?
IVF treatments can be very expensive. At the same time, there are many child-
ren in the world who are in need of adoption. Given this, it is worth considering
whether there is a duty to adopt rather than have expensive IVF treatments.
Drawing on Peter Singers idea of a duty of easy rescue, some people have ar-
gued that those who want to have children, including those who want to use
IVF treatments, have a duty to adopt rather than have biological children. In
this talk, I shall argue that adoption is not a case of easy rescue, but that ne-
vertheless, there is a duty to adopt, based on the right of children to be loved.
Amy Mullin (Toronto)

Children, Hope, Hostile Environments and Harry Potter
It is common to regard developing childrens capacity for autonomy as a sig-
nificant parental obligation, but little philosophical attention has been paid to
the importance of children developing the ability to hope, nor the distincti-
on between a generally (and often unrealistic) optimistic attitude and engaged
hope. Engaged hope is understood as belief that it is possible to achieve desi-
red outcomes along with planning with regards to steps to achieve them, and
motivation to pursue those steps. I argue that childrens ability to hope and
actual hopeful activities are critical for autonomy, and for resilience in the face
of obstacles and adversity. I discuss barriers to childrens hope in the form of
hostile environments, and explore the extent to which works of imaginative
fantasy aimed at children, such as the first Harry Potter novels, can serve as a
resource in developing hope, while acknowledging the dangers of unrealistic
hope.
Adam Swift (Warwick)

Childrens Needs: What Are They? Who Should Meet Them?
One cannot assess what children need without answering the question need
for what? My talk will consider various answers and explore their differing
implications. Distinguishing between material and affective needs, I will consi-
der the distinctive contribution made by personal relationships with particular
adults, and focus on what properties those relationships must have if they are
effectively to meet childrens needs. Differing views about what those proper-
ties are will have some implications for the question of who should (and indeed
who can) meet childrens needs, but who should bear the cost of meeting them
is a separate issue.
Program
The program will include 32 talks in two parallel sessions and three keynote
talks over the course of two days. The conference dinner is on Thursday.
Thursday, 13 July 2017

09:00 Welcome
09:20 Keynote Talk by S Matthew Liao
Room: 4.102, 4th Floor
10:40 Break
11:00 Session 1 & 2
12:30 Lunch
13:40 Session 3 & 4
14:40 Break
15:00 Session 5 & 6
16:00 Break
16:20 Keynote Talk by Amy Mullin
17:40 End
20:00 Conference Dinner
Friday, 14 July 2017
09:00 Session 7 & 8
10:00 Break
10:20 Session 9 & 10
11:20 Break
11:40 Session 11 & 12
13:10 Lunch
14:00 Keynote Talk by Adam Swift
Panel Program
Panel 1: The Well-Being and Value of Children
Chair: Daniela Cutas, Room: 4.101, 4th Floor
The Value of Childhood

Monika Betzler
Examples abound in which people, once adult and able to look back on their
lives, deplore their lost childhood. Further empirical evidence suggests that
a good childhood has particular value for a good life. The aim of this paper is
to explore what precisely makes childhood, as the first stage of life, uniquely
valuable, and how we can understand the connection between a good child-
hood and whole-life well-being.
Philosophical theories on whole-life well-being fail to account for the par-
ticular value of a good childhood for a good life. Instead, so-called temporal
egalitarianists maintain that the good life consists of the sum of its (in principle)
equally valuable parts. Since the phase of childhood is typically a rather small
part of a persons life span, a bad childhood can supposedly be compensated
for. Differently, so-called temporal preferentists maintain that particular stages
in life have more value. It is the prime of life that some take to be especial-
ly important, as this phase of life features the persons most important goals.
However, from the relatively small importance of childhood goals, this view
wrongly infers the minimal importance of a good childhood for a good life.
Given the implausible implications of these theories, my aim is to provide
a better explanation as to how the goods that accrue during childhood have a
particular impact on how well a persons life scores overall. Michael Bishops
causal network theory of well-being helps me substantiate the claim that ear-
ly developed childhood goods are important causal drivers for positive causal
networks. The absence of these causal drivers, instead, makes it easy to eit-
her extinguish a positive causal network or to prevent it from getting off the
ground. The value of childhood is thus best explained by reference to the tem-
poral location in which certain goods accrue. Suitable grounds are thus provi-
ded for a moderate time preferentism with regard to whole-life well-being.
The Badness of the Inequalities that Affect Children

Julia Mosquera
This paper argues that there are at least two respects in which the inequalities
that affect childhood are worse than the inequalities that affect other stages
of life and that this gives us good reasons to adopt a stages of life egalitarian
perspective (McKerlie, 1989; 2102) as opposed to a whole lives one. Stages
of life egalitarianism would be better suited to evaluate the inequalities that
affect children than whole lives egalitarianism since it would aim at achieving
equality between childhoods, and between childhoods and other stages of life,
rather than equality between whole lives, and so it would reject that the ine-
quality that affects childhood can be compensated by equality at later stages
of ones life.
Firstly, as opposed to adults, children are typically non-responsible for most
of the inequalities they are subject to. Children do not typically make decisions
that will impact how their lives go and whose results can make them worse off
than other children, such as which school to go, their diet, etc. Young children
lack the relevant capacities and the practical knowledge to make such decisi-
ons so these are normally made for them, and they are recipients of their out-
comes. Thus, childrens inequalities will be typically either the result of adults
decisions, or the result of brute luck. This makes their inequalities undeserved
and as such particularly bad according to conceptions of justice sensitive to
choice.
Secondly, the inequalities that affect children can have a strong and long-
term impact on their future life. Childhood is a critical period for the develop-
ment of moral conduct. Studies in cognitive developmental science show that
those children that are subject to hostile moral environments that lack recipro-
city and equality are likely to believe that life does not primarily revolve around
caring or fairness, but around power and domination (Arsenio & Gold, 2006),
so unequal and unfair environments do compromise their concepts of fair and
just behaviours (ODonnell, Schwab-Stone & Ruchkin, 2006). Thus, subjection
to inequalities and unfair treatment will make children develop the wrong set
of emotional and moral expectations.
The Well-Being of Children: Solving a Dilemma

Alan T. Wilson
Theorists have recently begun the important task of accounting for the nature
of well-being in children (Skelton, 2016; Hannan, forthcoming; Tomlin, forthco-
ming). This work raises concerns about the adequacy of standard philosophical
approaches to well-being. The problem is that children fare rather poorly when
evaluated according to such approaches. Children typically lack many of the
factors that have been identified as positive contributors to well-being, such as
rationality, autonomy, desire-fulfilment, and perhaps even happiness (under-
stood as positive affect minus negative affect).
This realisation leads to an apparent dilemma (Tomlin, forthcoming). On the
one hand, we might continue to use standard accounts of well-being when
evaluating the lives of children. Opting for this approach seems to imply a
so-called predicament view of childhood, on which well-being among child-
ren is typically very low (Hannan, forthcoming). On the other hand, we might
argue that different accounts of well-being apply at different stages of life, such
that across-life comparisons of well-being are not possible. This avoids the pro-
blem of implying a predicament view of childhood, but it has other problematic
implications. For example, it lacks plausibility in accounting for certain end-
of-life situations that we would intuitively view as constituting a reduction in
well-being.
I argue that this dilemma can be avoided by rejecting a commonly-held as-
sumption. Well-being invariabilism is the view that: Any X that non-instrumen-
tally enhances well-being in one context must enhance well-being in any other
(Fletcher, 2009). More specifically, I argue that we ought to reject the assump-
tion that factors which enhance or negate well-being must always do so to the
same extent. Instead, we ought to accept that the positive or negative impact
of a given well-being contributor is subject to discounting or inflation depen-
ding on the role that that factor plays in the agents overall development. Using
examples of commonly-proposed well-being contributors, I explain how the
rejection of well-being invariabilism in favour of an inflation/discounting model
allows us to respond to the dilemma regarding the well-being of children. By
making this move, it becomes possible to use the same account of well-being
across life-stages, without thereby implying a predicament view of childhood.
Panel 2: Adolescents Autonomy

Chair: Andrew Schroeder, Room: 4.10, 4th Floor
Too young for choosing abortion? Discussing legal restrictions

on girls access to termination of pregnancy
Rosana Trivio Caballero
Most legislation on abortion in the European Union countries requires women

under the age of majority to get their parents or guardians consent before
having an abortion. When obtaining the consent is not possible, alternative
control mechanisms are established, such as the issuance of certificates by ex-
perts (usually doctors) or judicial authorizations. However, there are some data
showing that most of the pregnant minors are usually accompanied by one or
both parents when they undergo an abortion. When parents are not present, it
is normally due to family circumstances in which young women are particularly
vulnerable.
Based on this apparent gap between the legislative frameworks that regula-
te access to abortion for underage women, on the one hand, and the real expe-
riences of these women, on the other, the aim of this proposal is to discuss to
what extent the requirement of a parental authorization guarantees pregnant
girls wellbeing and autonomy in their decision-making. In this regard, one of
the most frequent arguments that justifies parental intervention is the need
to protect girls best interest, especially in situations of vital importance and
future impact, as termination of pregnancy has been considered.
According to the best interest principle, would the elimination of parental
authorization imply an injury by omission and, consequently, an increase of
minors vulnerability? Or, conversely, the elimination of this requirement would
be a protection measure against the potential abuse of power from their pa-
rents/guardians? Considering these questions, in this paper I will try to cont-
ribute to the debate on the difficulties to guarantee sexual and reproductive
rights of girls, who combine under their condition a double risk of vulnerability
for being both minors and women.
On Adolescent Refusals of Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment:

A Welfarist Proposal
Anthony Skelton, Lisa Forsberg & Isra Black
In some jurisdictions adolescent consent to life-prolonging medical treatment

is treated as normatively conclusive, while refusals of such treatment are not.
In such jurisdictions a court or someone with parental responsibility possesses
the power to authorize medical treatment even when an adolescent validly
refuses. In several Canadian provinces a minor under 16 years of age may be
treated over her valid refusal of treatment if a court rules that the treatment
is in her best interests. In England and Wales, a minor who is considered com-
petent to refuse life prolonging medical treatment may be treated against her
valid refusal if a person with parental responsibility consents, or a court rules
that the treatment is in her best interests.
What might justify treating the refusals of adolescents as less normatively
weighty than their consents? We investigate this question by examining three
views that attempt to justify it. The first two are versions of transitional pater-
nalism, on which the asymmetry is justified because the normative power an
adolescent has to consent to life-prolonging medical treatment is shared with
another. The third view seeks to justify the asymmetry on the grounds that,
because the limitations on the power adolescents have are grounded in their
best interests and occur early on in life as part of a period of preparation for
an autonomous life, the limitations do not interfere with the ability to live a
self-directed life. Therefore, they are justified.
These views focus in on the nature of adolescent autonomy and its limita-
tions. We reject all three views. We argue instead that adolescent well-being
involves distinct goods, and that these justify the asymmetry. Among the goods
that might be relied on to justify the asymmetry are autonomy and a sort of ca-
refreeness or a measure of freedom from making certain, impactful decisions.
Gradualism about adolescent status: not rights but

responsibilities
Garrath Williams & Faye Tucker
The transition from childhood to adulthood is complex, normatively as well

as developmentally. One response is to offer a gradualist account in terms of
changes in the rights borne by the person. In particular, it is sometimes sugge-
sted that the child moves from having rights that protect his or her *interests*
to rights that protect his or her *choices*. This type of account has an obvious
attraction insofar as it recognises the childs path toward the status of auto-
nomous adult one whose *choices* should be respected. It also appears to
account for the complex transition of adolescence. We will argue that such
accounts are flawed and that it is more revealing to frame the transition in
terms of the adolescents emerging responsibility for her own life. In part, this
is because of well-known problems in rights talk, concerning the allocation of
correlative duties to uphold rights, as well as well-known problems in choice
theories of rights, especially their difficulties in accounting for all the rights
usually accorded to adults. Here, however, we want to emphasise some dif-
ficulties that are especially important in the context of adolescence. We pay
particular attention to the special position that adolescents are in, both depen-
dent on their parent(s) and learning to act independently. If we think of parents
as having a special duty to negotiate a transition between their childs interest
and choice rights, we see that they will face serious epistemic obstacles, as
their children start to insist on (or indeed: gain a right to) privacy and to naviga-
te a sphere of relatively independent personal relationships. Relational changes
as children mature mean that parents necessarily lack the knowledge to enact a
rights-based gradualism. In order to account for the shifting normative position
of adolescents and parents, we need a more nuanced gradualism that empha-
sises shifts in *responsibilities* as adolescents exercise their emerging right to
relate to peers and elders outside the family.
Panel 3 & 5: Book Symposium on Ethics and the Endangerment

of Childrens Bodies
Chair: Gunter Graf, Room: 4.101, 4th Floor
Comments by Christine Straehle, Matteo Bonotti & Anna Smajdor
Response by Gunter Graf & Gottfried Schweiger
This symposium will discuss the recent book by Gunter Graf and Gottfried
Schweiger on childrens bodily integrity. Bodily integrity is an important part
of a childs physical and mental well-being, but it can also be violated through
various threats during childhood; not only affecting physical health but also
causing mental damage and leading to distortions in the development of the
self. Gunter Graf and Gottfried Schweiger give an account of three areas, which
present different serious dangers: (1) body and eating, (2) body and sexuality,
and (3) body and violence. Through an in-depth examination of the available
theoretical and empirical knowledge, as well as a thorough ethical analysis, the
central injustices in the mentioned areas are identified and the agents with
responsibilities towards children displayed. They conclude by providing insight
into the necessity of an ethical basis for policies to safeguard children and their
bodies.
Panel 4: Education
Chair: Minkyung Kim, Room: 4.102, 4th Floor
Creating Global Citizens? Toleration, Pluralism and Global

Citizenship Education
Johannes Drerup
Toleration is a recurrent theme in contemporary debates about global citizens-

hip education (GCE). It plays a pivotal normative role in general conceptions of
GCE as well as in different domains of GCE, such as human rights education.
My presentation will focus on two interrelated problems and ambivalences that
are immanent to the very idea of a global conception and justification of educa-
tion to tolerance as it is advocated by GCE. The first of these problems con-
cerns the role of toleration in public debates. Critics of toleration as a political
and educational ideal have pointed out that discourses of toleration are deeply
entangled with societal power struggles that naturalize social hierarchies and
reify individual and collective identities. In light of this criticism, toleration not
just refers to the peaceful resolution and negotiation of conflicts that pervade
the world society. On the contrary, toleration itself seems to create and per-
petuate precisely those political conflicts it is meant to resolve. The second
and closely related problem concerns the justification of toleration as a global
ideal in a global context. Especially postcolonial critics have argued that liberal
conceptions of GCE and of toleration rely on distinctively `Western notions of
the self and of autonomy, which are neither compatible with the universalistic
aspirations of GCE nor with the vast plurality of conceptions of the good to
be found around the globe. Based on a reconstruction of these critiques I will
develop a defence of a minimalist conception of toleration as an aim of GCE.
Childhood in Jean-Franois Lyotards Philosophy

Emine Sarikartal
The aim of this paper would be to trace out the childhood figures in Lyotards
philosophy in order to understand how childhood can become a ground upon
which totalizing thought and practices are problematized. This kind of analy-
sis could be an opportunity for combining the questions of recent childhood
studies with classical concepts of philosophy, and for developing an interdis-
ciplinary research with the aid of philosophical perspectives. Childhood, com-
pared to his most famous concepts of postmodern and diffrend, is a less
explored, yet highly significant notion in Jean-Franois Lyotards philosophy. It
appears in his late writings as infantia, referring to the special status of children
in Roman law, mainly in terms of language ability, but also in terms of the con-
cepts of mancipium or oikos, conveying certain social and political structures in
Antique Roman and Greek cities. Thus infantia, representing something more
than a stage in life, becomes in Lyotardian philosophy a notion for interroga-
ting the role and place of the weak, the inarticulated, the heterogenous or
the altering within the systematical, which can allude to language as well as
to society. Furthermore, looking closer to older texts of Lyotard, one can see
that childhood appears under various figures, connected to psychoanalysis and
aesthetics in 1970s, associated to the overarching justice problem pointed out
by the concept of diffrend in 1980s. Indeed, one can see that through the
figures of infantile, minority, aisthesis and infantia, childhood stresses an inte-
rest for the inarticulated in Lyotards thought. This appears to be the place of
a resistance against totalizing tendencies in society itself or in thinking more
generally. Nevertheless, the relation between childhood and the system as to-
tality is much more complicated than a simple opposition. Childhood happens
to be an element of constitutive alterity within the system itself, making it work
despite and together with its violence, pointing out the risks of injustice and
damage inherent to it. This is why childhood in Lyotardian sense seems to be
deeply philosophical. It is the very foundation of philosophical thought as judg-
ment, appearing to be inseparable from the indeterminate question of justice.
Panel 6: Childrens Autonomy I

Chair: Faye Tucker, Room: 4.102, 4th Floor
The Importance of Autonomy Support for Infants, Toddlers,

and Young Children
Marilea Bramer
Much of the philosophical literature on autonomy either assumes that children

are not yet autonomous (Feinberg 1992, Schapiro 1999) or that only older chil-
dren (age 10 and up) are autonomous or partially autonomous (Schrag 2004,
Vince and Petros 2006, Ross 1998). Prevalent attitudes, however, suggest that
infants and toddlers lack autonomy (Levinson 1999). Infants and toddlers are
ignored under the assumption that they lack autonomy. This assumption is
highly problematic because of how it influences our view of and treatment of
young children, specifically preverbal infants and toddlers.
Many people tend to assume that children do not have significant com-
mitments and that their goals and projects are unimportant, or at least less
important than the goals and projects of adults. When it comes to infants and
toddlers, we generally think of them as stereotypical representations of their
kind (the average baby/toddler) rather than as individuals. This view can be
highly tempting with preverbal children especially. I argue that this view is pro-
blematic. When we see babies and toddlers, as something less than individu-
alsas the average baby or the average toddler, we treat them in ways that
are not conducive to their development into autonomous individuals. To de-
monstrate this, I examine the current view advanced by Amy Mullin that even
very young children have limited autonomy (Mullin 2007, 2014). I argue that
even if one rejects the view that children have limited autonomy, there are still
compelling reasons to accept that all children, including infants and toddlers,
deserve autonomy supportto be treated in ways that support their existing
and/or developing autonomy. I discuss the extensive consequences this has on
how we treat infants and toddlers.
Can a childs autonomy rights support her parents selection

for disability?
Andrew Schroeder
Many debates in the philosophy of disability center around wellbeing. The stan-
dard argument, for example, against the permissibility of intentionally having
disabled children (through selecting for disability before birth, failing to prevent
disability after birth, or actively causing disability) appeals to the claim that
disabilities are bad for their possessors. The most common response from the
opposing side seeks to justify at least some such choices by arguing that many
disabilities do not in fact reduce wellbeing.
I argue, however, that in a wide range of cases, the permissibility of causing
or failing to prevent disability does not crucially depend on the future wellbeing
of the child. Instead, we should appeal to something like Feinbergs anticipa-
tory autonomy rights of children: parents have an obligation to ensure that,
when their children become adults, they will have a wide range of valuable
opportunities open to them. This shift, from wellbeing to opportunity, is im-
portant. Empirical research suggests that the relationship between disability
and wellbeing is complicated and not well-understood, but it is much clearer
that disability prevents people from pursuing certain valuable options.
Several other philosophers have agreed that we should think about the per-
missibility of causing or failing to prevent disability in terms of Feinbergs an-
ticipatory autonomy rights. Those philosophers unanimously conclude that,
because disabilities like deafness close off many valuable opportunities, it is
typically wrong for parents to select for them. This simple analysis, though,
will not work. Although deafness closes off some options, it opens up others.
There is no clear way to measure the quantity of options open to the deaf
vs. the hearing, and even if there were, any plausible account of the value of
opportunities will need to weigh quality as well as quantity.
Accordingly, in the second half of the paper I look at different ways in which
we might measure the value of a set of options which we could preserve for
a child. The possibilities include valuing option sets via: (1) an objective stan-
dard, (2) their consequences for the wellbeing of the child, (3) the future prefe-
rences of the child, (4) the preferences of the parent(s), or (5) social consensus.
I conclude (contrary to the existing literature) that, on the basis of their chil-
drens anticipatory autonomy rights, parents likely should be given relatively
wide latitude to make choices that cause or fail to prevent certain disabilities.
Panel 7: Childrens Vulnerabiltiy

Chair: Thomas Grote, Room: 4.101, 4th Floor
The real value of parent-child vulnerability

Mianna Lotz
To be vulnerable is conceived in philosophical terms as to be in a state of de-

pendency and/or susceptibility to harm, threat or setback to ones interests or
welfare. Recent philosophical discussions have focused on the moral signifi-
cance and potentially hazardous nature of childrens vulnerability in particular,
including and perhaps especially within the parent-child relationship. Of
specific interest to me is the matter of the childs emotional and agential vulne-
rability to their parent(s).
Some of these discussions may seem to imply that (what Goodin famous-
ly depicts as) the relational vulnerability of children ought to be viewed as a
morally problematic aspect of the parent-child relationship, and perhaps more
generally of childhood itself. To regard it in such a way may in turn seem to
entail that we should adopt what Colin Macleod has referred to as a protecti-
onist attitude towards children, along with an obligation to minimize vulnera-
bility as far as possible, including by expediting the childs progression through
childhood dependency via the earliest possible inculcation of autonomy-rela-
ted skills and competencies (what I refer to as an eradicationist approach to
vulnerability management).
In this paper I explore further the question of how we ought to morally as-
sess and respond to the vulnerability of children in relation to their parents (and
relatedly, of parents vulnerability in relation to their children). In so doing I urge
against both protectionist and eradicationist responses to parent-child vulner-
ability, but at the same time I resist certain proposed alternative accounts (I call
these celebrationist accounts) that accord value to childrens vulnerability by
reference to the specifically parental goods that it affords.
I seek instead an account of the value of childrens relational vulnerability
that is not exclusively parent-referring. My proposed account elucidates inter
alia the mutual creativity that lies at the core of healthy parent-child relations-
hips, highlighting both the way in which that relationship is profoundly co-cre-
ative, and the fact that genuine co-creation is only possible between vulner-
able beings. I also show how this value and the vulnerabilities that make its
realization possible is similar yet importantly distinct from its cognate value
in intimate adult-adult relationships.
Is Childhood bad for children?

Gunter Graf & Alex Bagattini
Recently, Sarah Hannan has argued that childhood is bad for children, drawing
on and elaborating so-called predicament views of childhood which were long
dominant in the field and defended by many authors but which have become
less influential within the last years. In our paper, we address Hannans claim
and develop three counterarguments to her conclusion that childhood is bad
for children.
First, we will show that Hannans evaluation of the goods and bads of
childhood depends on assumptions of the good human life she does not make
explicit enough. It seems that values such as autonomy, independence, nonin-
terference and self-determination are considered indispensable for a good life
and that every human lacking these qualities is always comparatively bad off.
While we agree in principle with the value of autonomy, we will argue that it
depends on the life phase and capacities of a person how it has to be under-
stood and what it contributes to a good life. Reduced autonomy is not always
bad, but a feature of human life that varies across the life circle, a fact that must
be included in well-being comparisons.
Second, we point to a general weakness of Hannans general argument: Her
account of childrens well-being is underdeveloped, which leads to a distorted
picture what a good childhood looks like. While addressing some dimensions
discussed in the literature as intrinsic goods of childhood, she does not pay
sufficient attention to childrens particularities and especially the fact that chil-
drens well-being is in itself a dynamic concept that undergoes many changes
and developments during the state of childhood. Furthermore, her account
of her identified bads of childhood is not sufficiently attentive to research
showing that children are capable of astounding functioning in areas such as
rationality and practical reasoning, although sometimes in a different way than
adults.
Third, we will address an unclarity in Hannans account that is crucial for
her argument. Many of her assertions show that childhood is potentially very
bad for children in that their specific vulnerabilities might get exploited and
that they suffer extreme levels of ill-being. However, we will argue that this
only shows that childhood is a potentially risky phase that needs to get pro-
tected. But this does not entail that it is in fact bad for children to inhabit it, if
it is framed in a way that is attentive to childrens needs. Furthermore, we will
highlight the importance of social recognition in this regard. If a societies valu-
es center primarily on independence, rationality and autonomy as the highest
goals, this devalues childhood (as other phases of vulnerability) and provides
reasons to see it as something bad for children. If, however, the value of special
goods of childhood is recognized, it becomes unclear if childhood or adulthood
is better for those who inhabit them.
Panel 8: Childrens Autonomy II

Chair: Garrath Williams, Room: 4.102, 4th Floor
An argument for intrinsic respect for the will of children

Kalle Grill
Many agree that we have some reason to respect the will of an adult, as it
concerns her own life, regardless of any further positive consequences. Con-
sequentialists may think so because it has final value that a person directs her
own life. Deontologists may think so simply because the will of another person,
a creature with dignity or moral standing, calls for respect.
It seems a growing consensus that children have rights and that childrens
voices should influence how they are treated. However, the ultimate justifica-
tion invoked for these positions is typically either benefits to the child in the
present, or promotion of her future autonomy. Even when childrens rights are
understood as choice rights, they are given this indirect, consequentialist justi-
fication.
I propose that there are no good reasons to withhold from children the
intrinsic respect we owe adults. Respect does not require self-legislation, sys-
tematic life-plans, a conception of the good, or awareness of ones ongoing
self-creation. The only prerequisite for respecting a persons will is that there is
one. Infants want only to be feed, to sleep, and to be close to another human
being. As children grow older, they come to want other things.
Respect for persons are not exhausted by respect for their will. We also
have some reason to respect their preferences, and special reason to respect
those preferences that are informed and coherent. In addition to these reasons
of respect, we also have reasons of care, i.e. reasons to protect and promote
well-being.
When we recognize these different sorts of reasons, it is not implausible
to recognize intrinsic respect for the will of children. What we should do, all
things considered, is often to protect children from their own imprudent will.
We should often do so out of respect for their own over all preference set, and
in order to promote their well-being and future autonomy. When we protect
them in this manner, however, we also fail to respect their will, which is a moral
costs.
Parental exclusivity and the moral status of children

Daniela Cutas
Apart from exceptional cases in which e.g. grandparents have been awarded
visitation rights, parents are allowed to exclude any individual from their chil-
drens lives, regardless of the interests of anyone involved. This is the case th-
roughout the Western world. In part, this status quo is meant to allow parents
the space needed to discharge their parental responsibilities. Arguably, inter-
vening to regulate parental behaviour in such matters would be a problematic
interference into the family, with a potential to harm not only parents but also
children themselves.
The entitlement of parents to arbitrarily exclude others from their childrens
lives can lead to the prevention or loss of connections that may be extremely
important for children and others who are not their legal parents. For example,
many children who have been conceived following gamete donation express a
strong desire to know their donors. However, even in legislatures where it is
in principle possible for children to identify and reach out to the donors, they
might not know that they were donor conceived: because whether they come
to know of this is up to their parents. One of the things that makes this possible
is the scarcity of ways to even express connections to children independently
from their parents. This leads to a framing of such situations in terms of compe-
tition to parenthood status: if genetic connections are about parenthood and
family, then they are a threat to the legal parents; if they are not, then children
cannot have an interest in them.
In this talk, I will look at parental exclusivity, its foundation, and the degree
to which it is compatible with current ethical and legal aspirations regarding
the moral status of children and the importance of their interests. I will illustra-
te this with the case of gamete donation. I will highlight the lack of terminology
apt to describe childrens interests and connections outside of the family. I will
show that the conceptualisation of children as holders of moral status, with
interests independent from those of their parents, is still underdeveloped.
Panel 9: Parents and Society

Chair: Mianna Lotz, Room: 4.101, 4th Floor
Who Should Pay for the Costs of Children?

Isabella Trifan
In this paper I ask whether fairness tells in favour of sharing the costs of child-
ren between parents and nonparents. Some authors (Folbre 1994, 2001; Ge-
orge 1987, 1993) claim that children are public goods, and that nonparents
unfairly free ride on parents efforts of having and rearing children who grow up
to be the future productive citizens who enlarge the tax base and maintain pu-
blicly funded welfare schemes. Parents thus have fairness claims to be subsidi-
zed by nonparents who internalise these benefits, according to the principle of
fairness as proposed by H.L.A. Hart and John Rawls (Hart 1955; Rawls 1971).
Critics (Rakowski 1991; Casal & Williams 1995; Casal 1999) have argued
that parents do not meet the conditions that typically give benefits producers
fairness claims over others, but have not provided a detailed defence for their
understanding of the fairness principle, and have been challenged on this score
(Olsaretti 2013; Gheaus 2015).
This debate, then, goes back to the question of what makes free riding un-
fair, and what the proper scope of application of the fairness principle is. I side
with Garett Cullity (1995, 2008) and George Klosko (2004) in thinking that un-
fair free riding is an instance of giving oneself objectionably preferential treat-
ment, and I propose an independent standard for identifying the range of cases
in which internalizing benefits produced by others amounts to giving oneself
such exceptional treatment.
I argue that benefits producers and unfair free riders are relevantly similarly
situated when (a) they are all better off by receiving a good rather than not
receiving it, and (b) each of them would be even better off in prudential self-in-
terested terms by defecting from contributing to this goods production (while
still receiving it). The objectionably preferential treatment that free riders allow
themselves is enjoying the option that best promotes their interests (getting
the public good and defecting) at the expense of producers who forgo doing
precisely that.
I conclude that nonparents are not unfairly free riding on parents efforts
because while nonparents are indeed enjoying the option that best promotes
their interests (receiving public goods secured by others), so are parents who
have an interest in parenting themselves and therefore would not be better off
by defecting.
When parents love their children too much on the ethics of

helicopter parenting
Thomas Grote & Minkyung Kim
In the current bioethical debate on childrens wellbeing, the following two

(complementary) propositions have garnered a lot of attention: (i) being loved
by their parents is fundamental for childrens physical and cognitive develop-
ment and, thus, children have a right to be loved, (ii) if parents are unable to
love their children, e.g. due to post-maternal depression, they are morally ob-
liged to undergo pharmaceutical treatment i.e. to take so-called love drugs.
But does the converse also hold when parents love their children too much?
In recent years, the phenomenon of helicopter parenting (henceforth: HP)
has pervaded both East Asian and Western society. It may be defined as a pa-
renting style with parents exhibiting an overprotective attitude towards their
children, accompanied by an obsessive focus on their academic success.
In our talk, we will discuss the ethical issues that arise from HP. The talk will
be structured as follows: first of all, we will sketch the public discourse on HP.
Next, we will examine psychological studies concerned with HPs effects on
childrens personal development. Moreover, we will discuss sociological and
psychological factors that potentially cause HP . In this regard, we will defend
the claim that HP is (at least) constituted by excessive parental love. This view
draws heavily on Berit Brogaards work on romantic love. Brogaard develops a
theory of love according to which love works very much like a drug. Further-
more, love comes in degrees, and when a person loves someone too much, he
or she is prone to obsessive and irrational behavior. We intend to show that
Brogaards theory of romantic love may be applied to parental love as well. On
this basis, we will examine what exactly helicopter parents are to be morally
blamed for. We will then argue that the parents moral failing is not simply their
inability to see their children as independent beings, but also their negligence
to care for their own wellbeing. Finally, we will discuss whether anti-love pills
might be the cure for HP. To give you a glimpse at this point, our answer will
be negative.
Panel 10: Childrens Development I

Chair: Isabella Trifan, Room: 4.102, 4th Floor
Humanhood: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

James Bernard Murphy
We are accustomed to thinking of human life as a sequence of stages, as the

seven ages of man, from infancy to senescence. This conception of discrete
stages applies well to the development of plants and brute animals but not so
well to human beings. The whole of a plant or brute animal life really is just the
sequential sum of its temporal parts or stages. Every plant or animal is confined
to the horizon of one particular stage: a puppy does not look forward to his do-
ghood and a cat does not long for her carefree kittenhood. In a human life, by
contrast, the whole is always prior to its temporal parts: a child looks forward
to adulthood and adults look back to childhood. A child who does not expect to
grow up is not a child (perhaps, he is still an infant, mentally or physically); and
an adult who does not look back to her girlhood is still an overgrown child. We
never truly graduate from childhood or adolescence. Human life is always lived
in relation to the whole but that whole develops over time from a youthful
whole of expectation and planning to an aged whole of memory and under-
standing. Human development is not limited to childhood but is a lifelong jour-
ney toward physical, moral, psychological, and spiritual maturity. Development
is a temporal trajectory in which powers inherited from the past are actualized
in the present and then oriented toward a goal in the future. As a developing
whole, the meaning of human life can be captured only in a narrative, because
a narrative is a device to interweave past, present, and future by means of fo-
reshadowing and flashback. Even small children tell (often fanciful) stories of
where they came from and where they are going, just as do adolescents, adults,
and the aged. The content of these narratives develops over time but not the
essential human power to see and to live our lives as a whole, no matter what
stage we might occupy.
To be a child: a critical assessment of life-stage models of

childhood
Nicols Brando
What is so peculiar about the life, needs and claims of childhood that compels
us to distinguish children from adults? Most answers to this question in the
philosophical literature take a life-stage approach: they understand the claims
of childhood as being grounded on the needs of a person with regards to a
specific time-frame of their life. There are two strands of the life-stage model:
becoming and being. The becoming approach, grounded on developmental
psychology, considers childhood as the lack of certain adult capacities, and
focuses the claims of childhood in the adult life-stage. The being approach,
on the other hand, has criticised the former due to its focus on the adult-to-
be, and its disregard for the child herself. It proposes distinguishing childhood
from adulthood by giving prominence to the goods of childhood in itself and
to the benefits that this stage of life offers to a person, instead of looking at
its deficiencies. Both of these life-stage approaches offer important insights
for understanding the claims of childhood, but, due to their focus on a specific
stage of life, they miss some elements that should be considered when asses-
sing what a child is. This paper critically assesses life-stage understandings of
childhood, arguing that certain insights of both the becoming and the being
models are fundamental for conceptualising childhood, but that neither is suf-
ficient for a comprehensive understanding of the claims of children. Standing
on John Deweys understanding of child development, and based on the fun-
damental role that malleability plays in framing what I child is, I defend what I
label the to be model. It intends to encompass the claims that the child has,
regardless of the life-stage focus. While the being model focuses its efforts
on the present child, and the becoming model emphasises the future adult;
the to be model (as the infinitive intends to describe) aims at providing an
understanding of childhood that avoids the potential setbacks of focusing on
the goods of a specific life-stage, while expanding its definition to frame child-
hood as an ever-evolving process whose claims should not be reified through
life-stage definitions.
Panel 11: Responsibilities and Childhood

Chair: Kalle Grill, Room: 4.101, 4th Floor
Responsibility and the boundary between childhood and

adulthood
Ben Colburn
Suppose we think that equal opportunity is the right ideal to inform our educa-
tional system. What exactly does that require? Some argue that what is re-
quired is a level playing field at the age of majority. Equality of opportunity is
satisfied if we ensure that, at that particular time, we have successfully neut-
ralized or eliminated a class of equality-undermining factors like race, gender,
or social class. This having been done, we neednt (or shouldnt) correct for any
subsequent inequalities that develop. Critics of this one-off view level vari-
ous charges against it, to the effect that it is indefensible to think (assuming
one believes in equality of opportunity in the first place) that ones duties are
exhausted by guaranteeing a single moment of equality of opportunity.
The critics of the one-off view have so far had the better of the argument,
but in this paper I defend a version of that view, based on an appeal to the
value of individual autonomy. Autonomy is an unusual value in that recogni-
sing it commits one to a particular account of distributive justice: roughly, a
modified form of luck-egalitarianism with autonomy as its distribuendum. The
reason for this is that autonomy (which I understand to be an agent deciding
for herself what is valuable and living her life in accordance with that decision)
includes individual responsibility as a central component. That means that the-
re are internal limits to state action which aim at the promotion of autonomy:
there comes a point when ostensibly autonomy-promoting action becomes
self-defeating, by dint of undermining an individuals responsibility for how her
life goes. So, there comes a point in someones life when seeking to correct for
inequalities in autonomy will be interdict, because self-defeating in this way.
This line of thought supports the one-off view, with some important limita-
tions. It also offers an elegant way to solve the problem of delimiting childhood
and adulthood, but suggesting that that distinction is a consequence of (and
not a prior constraint on) the correct theory of educational justice.
Toddler Duties
Yuval Eylon
Children, let alone toddlers, are often thought of as largely exempt from moral
duties. The idea is that moral duties require full-blown agency and only attach
to subjects who are culpable if they fail to meet them. My aim is to challenge
this line of thought, by presenting a case in which I will argue toddlers have a
moral responsibility, without implying agency or culpability.
Following the perceived eradication of polio the Israeli vaccination program
included only the dead virus vaccine (as in other countries). In 2013 a wild
strain of Polio was discovered in routine sewage monitoring. Consequently, it
was decided to administer the live vaccination as well, in order to prevent pos-
sible infection and spreading of the virus.
The (very low risk) live Polio vaccination was given only to children who have
already been vaccinated with the highly effective dead vaccine. Therefore, the
personal health of these children stood to gain little or nothing from the vacci-
nation. The main projected benefit was to others who would come into contact
with the children - the children were used to help shield vulnerable members
of the community (unvaccinated, elderly, ill, etc.). Nevertheless, it seems that
parents were morally obliged to vaccinate their children.
What, if anything, can justify this perceived obligation? After rejecting se-
veral suggestions based on traditional views of parental rights and duties, I will
sketch my own proposal for justifying the obligation.
First, I introduce an imaginary case of a disease, schmolio, identical to our
polio case except that that both the disease and the vaccination are relevant
only to adults. I claim that in this hypothetical scenario adults are clearly under
a moral obligation to take the live vaccination for the benefit of others, even if
personally they stand to gain nothing.
Is this hypothetical relevant to the issue of parental obligation to vaccinate
their children? I suggest that the best explanation for the parental duty is that
children are under a similar obligation to the one of adults in the hypothetical
case, and that parents are under an obligation to discharge it.
Good Enough Mother

Danielle Levitan
In this paper I shall assume that childrens rights are superior to parental rights.
Such a hierarchy stems from the unique status of parents and children. Parents
are the bearers of an obligation regarding childrens rights, which stems from
the special relationship in which parent and child stand to one another. But the
extent of this primacy of rights is unclear. One reason for this lack of clarity
is that childrens rights are not derived from the relationship to their parents;
their rights are secured as individuals. But since an asymmetry in the parent
child relationship is thought to contribute to childrens chance of a good life,
most people are willing to accept that children have a right to best care, whate-
ver limitations this might place on parental rights, without further questioning.
But childrens rights are nevertheless limited: the question is not whether
one set of rights overrides the other but merely to what degree. To put it dif-
ferently, I argue here that children do not have a right to best care, which by
definition overrides parental rights entirely. Rather, they have a right to ade-
quate care, which allows parental autonomy to be maintained, with all that this
entails.
I want to establish four interrelated claims in this paper:
A. Children do not have a pro-tanto moral right, either enforceable or
non-enforceable, against their parents or against anyone else, to best care.
B. Children do have a moral right to adequate care. They have this right
against their parents, and the correlative parental duties are enforceable. They
also have such rights against the state, and the states correlative duties may be
numerous; one of them, however, is to enforce the parental duty.
C. As for good care which is better than adequate care, but not necessarily
best care:
i. Children do have such a moral right against their parents.
ii. The correlative parental duty is not enforceable.
iii. Children may have this right against the state to other duties, for instance
supplying free education above adequate level.
Panel 12: Childrens Development II & Parenting

Chair: Lisa Forsberg, Room: 4.101, 4th Floor
Learning to Have the World in View: Participatory Play,

Imagination, and Joint Attention in the Transformational View
of Human Cognitive Development
Christopher Joseph An
This paper aims to defend and develop the transformational view of human
learning and psychological development initially articulated by John McDowell
and given a sustained and detailed treatment by David Bakhurst in his book
The Formation of Reason (2011). The view maintains that humans undergo
a significant transformation from mere animal to a rational and intentional
agent through enculturation and immersion in shared practices and traditions.
Through this transformation the child acquires what McDowell calls a second
nature which picks out distinctly human modes of thinking, acting, and appro-
aching the world in general. A critic of the transformational view, Sebastian
Rdl, asserts that no such transformation takes place and that rationality alrea-
dy exists in the child as part of her first nature. He uses empirically-grounded
insights on the phenomenon of joint attention to argue that the child already
manifests rational consciousness from the get go.
In this paper I consider phenomenological accounts of joint attention (in-
formed by the work of Shaun Gallagher, Alva No and others) and argue that
Rdls treatment of the phenomenon is implausible and unconvincing. Further,
I advance a play-centered alternative to Rdls intellectualist treatment of joint
attention. Here I appropriate Johan Huizingas notion of play as a characteristic
element of human cultural practice and argue that the said notion is present in
episodes of joint attention. From this perspective of play, I maintain that the
child can gradually be more attuned to and familiar with the normative struc-
ture of a shared practice which allows her to have in view a normatively struc-
tured world as well as grasp the space of reasons that render her moves intelli-
gible in that world. Moreover, I argue that this perspective also allows the child
to obtain what P. F. Strawson calls participant reactive attitudes which attach
to rational and intentional agents insofar as they are considered participants
in a shared cultural practice. Corollary to my argument is that instead of con-
ferring reason a central and necessary role in joint attention as Rdl suggests,
I maintain that the crucial capacity at work in these episodes is the power of
the imagination.
Childrens Ideals as a Philosophical Topic

Krassimir Stojanov
This paper focuses on childrens ideals as both a theme of theoretical philoso-

phy and as a subject that should be addressed by the practice of philosophizing
with children. As an issue of the philosophy of childhood, ideals should be seen
through the lenses of the question, which role they play at the infantile self,
and how they develop within the intersubjective matrix between the child and
her significant others. On the other hand, the philosophical practitioner should
ask herself how and to what extent she should address those ideals, and why
this should be an end of practising philosophy with children (and of practising
philosophy in general). The bridging link between these two different types of
philosophical approaches of childrens ideals lies in the assumption that the-
se ideals require intersubjective recognition and intersubjective articulation as
necessary conditions for their formation and development. As I will argue in
the last part of this paper, philosophizing with children is best equipped to
make these conditions available. However, philosophizing with children should
not be restricted to the pedagogical task to support the development of the in-
fantile self. In addition, by recognizing childrens ideals as having intrinsic value
and by bringing them into philosophical inter-generational dialogs, this philoso-
phizing could have a significant revitalizing impact on the academic Philosophy
itself. In the first part of the paper, I focus on a psychoanalytical theory of the
genesis and the development of ideals during childhood as fundamental com-
ponents of the structure of the human self. This theory was mainly elaborated
by Heinz Kohut in the second half of the 20th century. As we shall see, ideals
can be stabilized only if they become articulated, and only if they are supported
by the significant others of the child. Axel Honneths theory of intersubjecti-
ve recognition, which will be discussed in the second part of the paper, helps
us describe more precisely which kinds of support are needed and how they
could be given. Finally, in the last two sections, I shall argue that philosophizing
with children is probably the best way to systematically encourage children to
articulate their ideals, and this supports their self-formation. Besides, philo-
sophizing with children should also be seen as a practice that generally keeps
philosophy vital, for only if philosophical concepts are linked to living and dy-
namic ideals, can these concepts be prevented from becoming a kind of dead
heritage.
The Best Available Parent

Anca Gheaus
Children need, and are being owed, parents: that is, people who control child-
rens lives in numerous ways. At the same time, childrens moral status makes
it generally impermissible to sacrifice their interests for the sake of advancing
other individuals interests. Because parenting involves such extensive power
over children, it seems that the moral right to rear a particular child is held by
the individual who would make the best available parent to that child. Yet, this
belief is at odds with universal practices of, and legislations regulating, childre-
aring. Liberal philosophers attempted to explain why mere adequate parents
can hold the right to parent. I analyse, and refute, two such attempts: one that
seeks to ground the right to parent in both the childs and the would-be ade-
quate parents interest; and a second one explaining why procreators have the
right to parent if they can do it adequately. The thesis that the right to parent is
held by the best available parent is deeply revisionary. However, the reform it
indicates need not be worrying, given two additional qualifications. First, while
parents may exclude others form exercising high level authority over their chil-
dren, they do not have the moral right to exclude others from associating with
the child. Therefore, the most important goods of childrearing can be made
available to a large number of adults. Second, children usually come into the
world as part of an already existing relationship with their gestational parent;
this relationship deserves protection.
A Few New Books in Philosophy and Childhood
Ethics and the Endangerment of Childrens Bodies (Palgrave

Macmillan 2017)
by Gunter Graf & Gottfried Schweiger
This book addresses the endangerment of childrens bodies in affluent socie-

ties. Bodily integrity is an important part of a childs physical and mental well-
being, but it can also be violated through various threats during childhood; not
only affecting physical health but also causing mental damage and leading to
distortions in the development of the self. The authors give an account of three
areas, which present different serious dangers: (1) body and eating, (2) body
and sexuality, and (3) body and violence. Through an in-depth examination of
the available theoretical and empirical knowledge, as well as a thorough ethical
analysis, the central injustices in the mentioned areas are identified and the
agents with responsibilities towards children displayed. The authors conclude
by providing invaluable insight into the necessity of an ethical basis for policies
to safeguard children and their bodies.
A Philosophical Examination of Social Justice and Child Poverty

(Palgrave Macmillan 2015)
by Gunter Graf & Gottfried Schweiger
This book investigates child poverty from a philosophical perspective. It iden-

tifies the injustices of child poverty, relates them to the well-being of children,
and discusses who has a moral responsibility to secure social justice for child-
ren. Based on both normative theory (particularly the capability approach) and
empirical evidence, the authors identify the injustices of child poverty, showing
how it negatively affects the well-being of children as well as their whole life
course. But child poverty is not given by nature. It is avoidable and there is
certainly the moral duty to alleviate it. Therefore, Graf and Schweiger develop
a normative theory of responsibilities, which clarifies the moral role of diffe-
rent agents in the poor childrens environment. They conclude their book by
sketching how their theory can be extended to global child poverty and what it
means to show equal respect and concern for every child not matter where
and in which context it was born. This book was published open access and can
be freely downloaded from the publsihers website.
The Nature of Childrens Well-Being (Springer 2015)

edited by Alex Bagattini & Colin Mcleod
This book presents new findings that deal with different facets of the well-
being of children and their relevance to the proper treatment of children. The
well-being of children is considered against the background of a wide variety of
legal, political, medical, educational and familial perspectives. It has three ma-
jor sections with the essays in each section loosely organized about a common
general theme. The first section focuses on issues concerning the relation bet-
ween childrens well-being and autonomy or agency. The second section deals
with child well-being insofar as the limits of parental authority are concerned.
The third section has a more applied orientation and addresses a variety of
public policy controversies involving the interpretation of childrens well-being.
The Right to Be Loved (Oxford University Press 2015)

by S Matthew Liao
S. Matthew Liao argues here that children have a right to be loved. To do so he

investigates questions such as whether children are rightholders; what grounds
a childs right to beloved; whether love is an appropriate object of a right; and
other philosophical and practical issues. His proposal is that all human beings
have rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life; therefore,
as human beings, children have human rights to the fundamental conditions for
pursuing a good life. Since being loved is one of those fundamental conditions,
children thus have a right to be loved. Liao shows that this claim need not be
merely empty rhetoric, and that the arguments for this right can hang together
as a coherent whole.
Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships

(Princeton University Press 2014)
by Harry Brighouse & Adam Swift
The family is hotly contested ideological terrain. Some defend the traditional
two-parent heterosexual family while others welcome its demise. Opinions
vary about how much control parents should have over their childrens upbrin-
ging. Family Values provides a major new theoretical account of the morality
and politics of the family, telling us why the family is valuable, who has the right
to parent, and what rights parents shouldand should not have over their
children.
Procreation and Parenthood: The Ethics of Bearing and Rearing

Children (Oxford University Press 2015)
edited by David Archard & David Benatar
Producing and rearing children are immensely important human activities.

Procreation and Parenthood offers new and original essays by leading philo-
sophers on some of the main ethical issues raised by these activities. An In-
troduction supplies an accessible overview of the current debates. Individual
chapters then take up particular problems such as: the morality of bringing
people into existence; what limits there might be on a persons freedom to re-
produce; whether human beings need to ensure that they only create the best
possible children; whether there is a conflict between justice and parents de-
votion of time and money to their own children; and, whether parents acquire
their role because of their intention to do so or because they are responsible
for bringing children into being.
Procreation, Parenthood, and Educational Rights: Ethical and

Philosophical Issues (Routledge 2017)
edited by Jaime Ahlberg & Michael Cholbi
Procreation, Parenthood, and Educational Rights explores important issues at

the nexus of two burgeoning areas within moral and social philosophy: pro-
creative ethics and parental rights. Surprisingly, there has been comparatively
little scholarly engagement across these subdisciplinary boundaries, despite
the fact that parental rights are paradigmatically ascribed to individuals res-
ponsible for procreating particular children. This collection thus aims to bring
expert practitioners from these literatures into fruitful and innovative dialogue
around questions at the intersection of procreation and parenthood. Among
these questions are: Must individuals be found competent in order to have the
right to procreate or to parent? What, if anything, can justify parents special
authority over, or special obligations toward, their children, particularly child-
ren they biologically procreate? How is the relationship between the right to
procreate and the right to parent best understood? How ought liberal societies
understand the parent-child relationship and the rights and claims it gives rise
to?
Justice, Education and the Politics of Childhood (Springer

2016)
edited by Johannes Drerup, Gunter Graf, Christoph Schickhardt &
Gottfried Schweiger
This volume contributes to the ongoing interdisciplinary controversies about

the moral, legal and political status of children and childhood. It comprises es-
says by scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds on diverse theoretical
problems and public policy controversies that bear upon different facets of the
life of children in contemporary liberal democracies. The book is divided into
three major parts that are each organized around a common general theme.
The first part (Children and Childhood: Autonomy, Well-Being and Paterna-
lism) focusses on key concepts of an ethics of childhood. Part two (Justice
for Children) contains chapters that are concerned with the topics of justice
for children and justice during childhood. The third part (The Politics of Child-
hood) deals with issues that concern the importance of `childhood as a his-
torically contingent political category and its relevance for the justification and
practical design of political processes and institutions that affect children and
families.
Philosophy of Childhood Today. Exploring the Boundaries

(Lexington Books 2016)
edited by Brock Bahler& David Kennedy
Today, while philosophy of childhood per se is a relatively boundaryless field of

inquiry, it is one that has clear distinctions from history, anthropology, sociolo-
gy, and even psychology of childhood. This volume of essays, which represents
the work of a diverse, international set of scholars, explores the shapes and
boundaries of the emergent field, and the possibilities for mediating encoun-
ters between its multiple sectors, including history of philosophy, philosophy
of education, pedagogy, literature and film, psychoanalysis, family studies,
developmental theory, ethics, history of subjectivity, history of culture, and
evolutionary theory. The result is an engaging introduction to philosophy of
childhood for those unfamiliar with this area of scholarship, and a timely com-
pendium and resource for those for whom it is a new disciplinary articulation.
2018 Workshop in Philosophy and Poverty
Poverty and the Family
17 & 18 May 2018, University of Salzburg
Invited Speaker: Jonathan Wolff (Oxford)
The Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research (CEPR) of the Univer-
sity of Salzburg is happy to announce the call for papers for its
2018 Salzburg Workshop in Philosophy and Poverty. In 2018,
the workshop will be held at the University of Salzburg on 17 &
18 May 2018 and focus on the topic of Poverty and the Family.
The invited speaker for this workshop is Jonathan Wolff (Ox-

ford), who will give a talk on Poverty, Social Expectations, and
the Family.
Possible topics for papers are, among others, the intergenera-

tional transmission of poverty, inequalities between and wit-
hin families, responsibilities towards poor families, parents and
children, the relation between the family and the state, parental
rights and duties under conditions of poverty, the ethical under-
pinnings of policy responses to family and child poverty, gender
roles, patriarchy, intimate violence and poverty, or procreation
in an radical unequal world and in times of severe poverty.
If you are interested in participating please submit an extended

abstract of 750 words ready for blind review via the submission
form on the workshop homepage. Deadline for submissions is
15 December 2017, and decisions will be communicated wit-
hin two weeks. It is expected that draft versions of the papers
are shared two weeks before the workshop.
www.workshop-poverty-philosophy.org
We thank our sponsors!
Kultur

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Philosophy and Childhood

Alexander Bagattini is a Postdoc at the Chair of Philosophy V, Ludwig-Maximi-

Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research

Netzwerk Philosophie & Kindheit

Project: Social Justice and Child Poverty

The address of the Unipark Nonntal is Erzabt-Klotz-Strae 1, 5020 Salzburg.

Multiple bus lines (3, 5, 8, 20 and 25) stop next to it.

Restaurant Arge Beisl, Ulrike-Gschwandtner-Strae 5, 5020 Salzburg

Meeting Point: in front of the conference venue at 19.45!

(The confernce dinner is not included in the conference fee!)

S. Matthew Liao (New York)

Amy Mullin (Toronto)

Adam Swift (Warwick)

Thursday, 13 July 2017

The Value of Childhood

The Badness of the Inequalities that Affect Children

The Well-Being of Children: Solving a Dilemma

Panel 2: Adolescents Autonomy

Too young for choosing abortion? Discussing legal restrictions

Most legislation on abortion in the European Union countries requires women

On Adolescent Refusals of Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment:

In some jurisdictions adolescent consent to life-prolonging medical treatment

Gradualism about adolescent status: not rights but

The transition from childhood to adulthood is complex, normatively as well

Panel 3 & 5: Book Symposium on Ethics and the Endangerment

Creating Global Citizens? Toleration, Pluralism and Global

Toleration is a recurrent theme in contemporary debates about global citizens-

Childhood in Jean-Franois Lyotards Philosophy

Panel 6: Childrens Autonomy I

The Importance of Autonomy Support for Infants, Toddlers,

Much of the philosophical literature on autonomy either assumes that children

Can a childs autonomy rights support her parents selection

Panel 7: Childrens Vulnerabiltiy

The real value of parent-child vulnerability

To be vulnerable is conceived in philosophical terms as to be in a state of de-

Is Childhood bad for children?

Panel 8: Childrens Autonomy II

An argument for intrinsic respect for the will of children

Parental exclusivity and the moral status of children

Panel 9: Parents and Society

Who Should Pay for the Costs of Children?

When parents love their children too much on the ethics of

In the current bioethical debate on childrens wellbeing, the following two

Panel 10: Childrens Development I

Humanhood: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood

We are accustomed to thinking of human life as a sequence of stages, as the

To be a child: a critical assessment of life-stage models of

Panel 11: Responsibilities and Childhood

Responsibility and the boundary between childhood and

Good Enough Mother

Panel 12: Childrens Development II & Parenting

Learning to Have the World in View: Participatory Play,

Childrens Ideals as a Philosophical Topic

This paper focuses on childrens ideals as both a theme of theoretical philoso-

The Best Available Parent

A Few New Books in Philosophy and Childhood

Ethics and the Endangerment of Childrens Bodies (Palgrave

This book addresses the endangerment of childrens bodies in affluent socie-

A Philosophical Examination of Social Justice and Child Poverty

This book investigates child poverty from a philosophical perspective. It iden-

The Nature of Childrens Well-Being (Springer 2015)

The Right to Be Loved (Oxford University Press 2015)

S. Matthew Liao argues here that children have a right to be loved. To do so he