Philosophy / PHILOSOPHY ESSAY
Are Children Responsible for Their Actions?
An essay on children’s moral responsibility, distinguishing answerability for an action from the culpability we attach to it.
The question
Children can explain their actions, yet we usually judge their responsibility differently from that of adults. This essay uses that tension to examine Angela Smith’s account of responsibility as answerability.
The distinction
The essay develops a separate notion of culpability to account for degrees of moral responsibility. It considers knowledge, foreseeable consequences and cognitive development, arguing that answerability alone leaves out an important part of how we judge children’s actions.
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