Original post found here.
If by sentience, one refers to the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, then it is quite possible that children have greater sentience, due to their physical and emotional sensitivity- not to mention the happy days of childhood are often seen as some of life's most powerful. However, when referencing children's ability to reason, then of course they fall short in comparison to adults. When considering sentience as a human faculty (as opposed to a generalized view of potential subjective experiences as described above), it is actually quite feasible that (many) children may have the same (ish) level of sentience as adults.
If one considers sentience an evolutionary adaptation, then it probably develops with the same chronology in lifetime development as it does in species development, as do many of our other adaptations (birth -> color perception -> sentience -> moral sense -> executive functions etc.). Quite often, with the exception perhaps of some of our newer faculties, these adaptations develop rather suddenly and largely to their full extent as soon as they begin to appear. By this token, the fundamental qualities of sentience are largely developed by mid-childhood. While many other mental faculties may be underdeveloped, I believe that by age six or seven, most children will have reached a (largely) full level of sentience, according to this theory.
In addition to sentience however, many people feel a much stronger moral obligation to children due to instinct, kinship, or cuteness. As such, harming a child may carry greater moral weight than harming an adult, due to the indirect effect it could have on others, but of course, this is entirely situational.
In short, it seems that children, once having achieved basic sentience, are probably of equal moral weight when compared to adults- although quite often the moral faculty does not develop fully until later in childhood, which of course, opens up a whole new can of worms.
No comments:
Post a Comment