Mar Cabezas

Exploro las consecuencias y limitaciones de la noción de agencia moral aplicada la infancia señalando 1) cómo incluso una posición adultocéntrica sobre la agencia moral tendría que considerar a los niños como agentes morales ya que a cumplen sus criterios de autonomía, responsabilidad y conciencia moral; 2) cómo otras estrategias argumentativas centradas en la noción de persona o en conceptos graduales son también problemáticas. Así, sugiero un cambio de enfoque centrado en las condiciones específicas de una acción para evitar tanto la adultización de los niños como el menosprecio de sus experiencias morales qua niños, lo que beneficiaría una ética de la infancia.

In this chapter, we explore the potential of children’s rights for the alleviation of poverty with a special focus on a child’s right to bodily integrity. In the first section, we analyze the children’s rights discourse, which is closely connected to the Convention on the Rights of the Child of the United Nations (CRC). We recognize its importance but also detect a need to connect it more thoroughly to philosophical theories. In Sect. 4.2 therefore, we present a capability approach to children’s rights and suggest that these rights should be seen as means that justice for children can be secured. We suggest four criteria to identify which capabilities/functionings are crucial in terms of social justice for children and which therefore should be protected by rights, claiming that they should (1) reflect the best available empirical knowledge, (2) be societally influenceable, (3) be objectively determinable, and (4) integrate an evolving perspective. In Sect. 4.3, we then turn to the functioning/capability of and right to bodily integrity. While not explicitly part of the CRC, such a right is helpful to identify the harms that poverty may generate to children’s well-being and well-becoming in a holistic way. Finally, in Sect. 4.4 we point to the relation between a right to bodily integrity and the empowerment of children in poverty, paying special attention to the fact that it connects concerns about children’s bodies with children’s agency and self-relations.

Justice for children and during childhood and the particular political, social and moral status of children has long been a neglected issue in ethics, and in social and political philosophy. The application of general, adult-oriented theories of justice to children can be regarded as particularly problematic. Philosophers have only recently begun to explore what it means to consider children as equals, what goods are especially valuable to them, and what are the obligations of justice different agents have toward children. In addition, while philosophers have extensively written about global poverty and inequality, the issue of disadvantages during childhood, especially child poverty, has only been superficially addressed. This also applies to the Capability Approach (CA) as a normative theory. Although the socio-scientific and economic literature on how to conceptualize capabilities and functionings of children and how to measure them in the context of poverty and wellbeing is steadily growing, the normative aspects of these issues are still under-theorized. The CA offers a unique framework to engage with both the topic of justice for children and questions concerning what justice implies and demands with regard to children living and growing up in disadvantaged circumstances. Furthermore, justice and disadvantage during childhood is a compellingly interdisciplinary topic that invites the combination of ethical and philosophical reasoning together with socio-scientific theories and empirical knowledge. In this special issue of Ethical Perspectives we bring together theoretical and empirically informed discussions that explore the CA in relation to children and the many disadvantages they can face in their lives.

Considering the recent epigenetic studies on the transgenerational transmission of trauma, this article aims to 1) explore its ethical implications for the concept and nature of moral damage, and 2) offer normative suggestions on collective responsibilities both synchronic and diachronic. To do so, I first address recent epigenetic studies’ showing the crystallization of emotional information through generations, and second, defend that a unified approach to the concept of ghost damage may be useful to categorize this phenomenon, facilitate future research on this type of moral damage, and recognize its importance in the identification of hermeneutical injustice. Finally, I suggest that granting a right to transgenerational information may help avoid the perpetuation of inherited damage that jeopardize mental and physical health in the offspring.

This article explores the nature and consequences of being a successful child YouTuber as a new form of both child labor and play in the social media era. This new child activity can in principle act as an enhancer of child autonomy, creativity, and some specific goods of childhood, such as play, and exploration. However, the impact of becoming a micro-celebrity as a video blogger at a young age is to some extent underexplored. Thereby, I bring into the ethical discussion the specific conditions of this activity, such as overexposure, and adultization. By doing so, I show how it can turn out to be a threat to child’s well-being and well-becoming, especially in relation to the identity construction and intrafamily dynamics. I highlight its double role as both an enhancer of childhood’s specific goods and child vulnerability, especially when it becomes a silent form of subjugation. Thereby, I suggest that the strong version of the precautionary principle could be a normative guide to balance the children’s need to explore and autonomy without jeopardizing other specific goods of childhood and their well-becoming.

This article aims to explore the concept of victimless damage. This refers to paradoxical cases where a perpetrator and a moral wrong can be easily identified, but where somehow the role of the victim as such can be questioned. In order to explore this concept, I will first offer a typology of cases that could be labelled under this umbrella concept—namely, cases of deceased victims, biotechnological or no-identity cases, and the ones related to lack of awareness due to epistemic injustice. Then, after highlighting the common traits and discussing some fuzzy cases, I will flesh out the main arguments for and against of the existence of and need for this concept, on the basis of both moral objectivism and subjectivism. In my view, delving into these arguments could shed some light on the metaethical debate on the sine qua non conditions of moral damage and its relation to moral wrongness. Finally, I will conclude by advocating for the need to introduce a gradational concept of moral damage and the second-person perspective into moral philosophy in order to take into account potential cases of victimless damage, but without having to accept the premises of moral realism.

In this chapter, we aim to develop a set of considerations regarding the status of child poverty as moral damage. This approach may enrich the perspectives centered on material and social aspects, by enhancing our understanding of the complexities involved in the experience of child poverty. The consideration of child poverty as a form of moral damage could offer a complementary theoretical tool to analyze how the classic binomial aggressor-victim changes its shape in systemic collective problems. Hence, the aggressor could be made of multiple hands; the damage could be understood as omission or enabling of some conditions; and the victims could be both aware or to some extent unaware of their conditions. In this sense, moral damage would work as a key concept of ethical reasoning, allowing us to identify instances of damage with and without conscious victims, as well as cases without one clear direct aggressor. Emphasizing the key role of moral damage for the ethical argumentation on child poverty may be especially useful to shift the focus to children and to their development. Thus, we will explore the mechanisms by which poverty specifically promotes parental neglect, and how this phenomenon creates developmental and intergenerational impacts that objectify, in a very concrete way, the nature of child poverty as moral damage. Based upon this exploration, we will delve into the basic lines of a resilience-centered approach to policy as a measure to make justice in the long term, which intends to protect the child’s integral development, and to prevent revictimizations, in the face of adversity.

In this chapter, we explore the potential of children’s rights for the alleviation of poverty with a special focus on a child’s right to bodily integrity. In the fi rst section, we analyze the children’s rights discourse, which is closely connected to the Convention on the Rights of the Child of the United Nations (CRC). We recognize its importance but also detect a need to connect it more thoroughly to philosophical theories. In Sect. 4.2 therefore, we present a capability approach to children’s rights and suggest that these rights should be seen as means that justice for children can be secured. We suggest four criteria to identify which capabilities/ functionings are crucial in terms of social justice for children and which therefore should be protected by rights, claiming that they should (1) refl ect the best available empirical knowledge, (2) be societally infl uenceable, (3) be objectively determinable, and (4) integrate an evolving perspective. In Sect. 4.3, we then turn to the functioning/capability of and right to bodily integrity. While not explicitly part of the CRC, such a right is helpful to identify the harms that poverty may generate to children’s well-being and well-becoming in a holistic way. Finally, in Sect. 4.4 we point to the relation between a right to bodily integrity and the empowerment of children in poverty, paying special attention to the fact that it connects concerns about children’s bodies with children’s agency and self-relations.

Justice for children meets specific obstacles when it comes to its realization due not only to the nature of rights and the peculiarities of children as subjects of rights. The conflict of interests between short-term and long-term aims, and the different interpretations a state can do on the question concerning how to materialize social rights policies and how to interpret its commitments on social justice play also a role. Starting by the question on why the affluent states do not seem to be motivated enough to fully assume those duties of justice toward children —derived form recognizing children’s rights—, this article aims to explore and shed light on what psychology of motivation and moral psychology, and positive approaches could offer in relation to political and ethical challenges toward childhood. Hence this article advocates for the modification and enrichment of the philosophical discourse on children’s rights with what psychology has proved to have a more efficient impact in agents’ action and motivation. In doing so, practical philosophy could improve its role helping understand and eventually surpassing some akratic tendencies in the public sphere with respect to children’s rights.

Construimos fronteras con supuesta base biológica y derivamos juicios morales de ellas. Asimismo, suponemos que fueron nuestras emociones —el miedo, el asco o la rabia— las que nos llevaron a tal error, especialmente cuando nos damos cuenta de la inconsistencia lógica de derivar juicios morales de dichas fronteras. En consecuencia, solemos identificar emociones con prejuicios, creencias u opciones falaces de las que más nos valdría librarnos. Sin embargo, como se tratará de argumentar a continuación, las emociones no son la causa del problema. Primero, porque el marco conceptual clásico dicotómico en el que razón y emoción son dos polos opuestos regidos por una tensión irreconciliable es a su vez cuestionable. Segundo, porque las emociones, en cuanto alarmas transmisoras de información relevante, pueden ser un elemento tremendamente útil en la identificación y superación de las discriminaciones surgidas de las fronteras dicotómicas. Así, el objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la relación de estos tres elementos, a saber, fronteras biológicas, juicios morales y emociones y, finalmente, argumentar a favor de las conexiones entre razón y emoción, mostrando los posibles beneficios de remplazar el modelo dualista por uno relacional.

States, as agents who make moral and political decisions, may also be influenced in decision making by emotions as fear, cognitive states as worry, expectations, etc. that will crystallize in the way they cope with the new challenging agenda. Bearing in mind that the argumentative debates about new risky technologies focus on the precautionary principle, and on an anticipated fear, this manuscript suggests to analyze the main biases that arise in the state anxiety (in attention, selection and evaluation of information, and memory) and vice versa, the different types of coping with anxiety depending of the styles of processing the information ( i.e. highly sensitive, highly anxious, repressive, and non-defensive); and will relate them to the different ways of interpreting the precautionary principle. Eventually, I will emphasize the advantages of a better knowledge of our emotional nature and an emotional education, also in political decision making

The classical dichotomical framework has shaped the western conceptualization of emotions and is still alive in our common imagery impregnating our own assumptions about the polarity emotion/reason. Thereby, my main purpose is to suggest that another framework can be defended. In order to it, I will firstly analyse the basis of this logic, as well as I will also offer a critique of its main principles and consequences. Finally, as a way of surpassing the old dichotomic model, I will argue in favour of the links between reason and emotions taking into account the new evidences found over the last decades. To conclude, I will point out some of the benefits of replacing a dualistic framework by an interactive one.

This article addresses the debate on fuzzy cases concerning the so called ‘mild’ and sporadic instances of physical violence against children by caregivers. The end of violence toward children is a current goal in the international scenario. However, myths on the use of violence and the scope of parental rights still survive. Thus, I examine the main theoretical, ethical and political challenges regarding conceptual clear-cut boun- daries and the burden of proof when justifying violence. Finally, I defend the role of a preventive approach on children’s wellbeing and family intervention as a fruitful way to surpass polarized debates on permi- ssibility and criminalization.

Todas las personas estamos dotadas de una conciencia moral. Además, solemos pensar que si algo es bueno o malo, lo es para cualquier persona en cualquier lugar. Sin embargo, la interacción con miembros de otras culturas, los dilemas propios de sociedades interculturales y los retos diarios de la convivencia con otras personas nos confrontan en muchas ocasiones con una realidad: el desacuerdo moral. Todos parecemos saber por qué lo bueno es bueno y lo malo es malo, hasta que tratamos de justificarlo. ¿Significa esto que estamos condenados a vivir en una especie de torre de Babel respecto de las cuestiones morales?¿Podemos distinguir y reconocer buenas razones morales, compartibles o universales? Y, si es así, ¿cómo podemos encontrar criterios válidos para todos? Si se aceptan los límites de la razón a la hora de justificar nuestras creencias morales, ¿quedarían alternativas viables o sólo podríamos construir “éticas” a la medida de cada sociedad? Esta obra ofrece un análisis crítico y detallado de las respuestas que se han dado a estas preguntas desde las distintas posturas filosóficas, haciendo especial hincapié en aquellas menos conocidas de la filosófica actual que abogan por dar un lugar a la dimensión emocional del ser humano, también en las cuestiones morales. Esta obra ahonda en otras propuestas viables que incluyen tanto el elemento racional como el emocional en la identificación de criterios de validez moral. Teniendo en cuenta fuentes filosóficas y psicológicas, y sin olvidar que el sistema emocional es un sistema evaluativo universal, la autora propone profundizar en el potencial de las emociones básicas como herramientas de comunicación útiles a la hora de resolver problemas relativos a la racionalidad práctica, pudiendo así ir más allá de las dicotomías clásicas como razón-emoción, objetivismo-subjetivismo, o racionalismo-emotivismo.

¿Qué debo hacer? ¿Qué quiero hacer? ¿Qué esperan de mí? Estas preguntas, presentes en nuestra vida cotidiana, nos remiten a una tensión a resolver en nuestra conciencia. El problema es que un dilema es un enfrentamiento de dos valores o principios que defendemos y a los que no queremos renunciar. Ante este panorama, ¿puede la filosofía resolver dilemas de la vida actual? La filosofía práctica tiene, sin duda, mucho que decir. Comprender la naturaleza de estos dilemas y los conceptos que los sustentan nos llevará a conocernos mejor a nosotros mismos, nuestras relaciones con los demás y los procesos de toma de decisión. Este libro presenta a través de diez dilemas las principales corrientes actuales de la ética y desgrana de manera accesible conceptos claves como persona, dignidad, daño, justicia, responsabilidad o autonomía. Combinando recursos de la psicología y la filosofía, Dilemas morales reta al lector a encontrar sus propias respuestas entendiendo mejor sus valores y principios como un primer paso para cualquier decisión consciente.

Children are affected by poverty more often than adults, and growing up in poverty has severe and long-lasting negative consequences for a child’s well-being. How-ever, children are also in a very weak position, both to escape poverty on their own and to publicly and politically enforce their claims to a better life. Accordingly, children living in poverty are victims of two intersecting forms of powerlessness: they are children and they are poor. In this article, we analyze this particular type of powerlessness from a children’s rights perspective and argue that, in order to effectively restore justice to children in pov-erty, the State has to implement a comprehensive children’s rights regime. We argue that the State is obliged to consider children’s best interests in all its policies – even those that are not directly related to children – in order to compensate for the lack of political agency during childhood. This demand reflects the particular social and political status of children, namely: that they are dependent on others for their well-being, that childhood is a phase of particular vulnerability and that (young) children lack certain competencies that are needed to enforce their claims.

Our concern is with the ethical issues related to girlhood and bodily integrity—the right to be free from physical harm and harassment and to experience freedom and security in relation to the body. We defend agency, positive self-relations, and health as basic elements of bodily integrity and we advocate that this normative concept be used as a conceptual tool for the protection of the rights of girls. We assume the capability approach developed by Martha Nussbaum as an ethical framework that enables us to evaluate girls’ well-being and well-becoming in relation to the potential, and often subtle, threats they face. The capability approach can be understood as a theory of justice, and, therefore, as an ethical and political approach. An enriched concept of bodily integrity can help in the design of better policies to address gender biases against girls because it could contribute to seeing them as active agents and valid participants.

Health is certainly a valuable asset in the life of every human being and of particular relevance for a flourishing childhood. As empirical research concerning the social determinants of health shows, its distribution can, at least to a certain extent, be influenced by the way a society is arranged. Many philosophers now acknowledge that a fair distribution of health has to be a central part of a just society and they discuss to what extent a right to health can be justified. However, they do not typically distinguish between physical and mental health and neglect the special problems arising from these distinct, though related, perspectives. In this paper, we argue in favour of such a distinction and ask whether a minimally just society ought to include mental health among the goods that are to be distributed in a fair way among its children. Furthermore, we investigate the relationship between mental health and happiness and ask whether making mental health a subject of justice implies that children are entitled not only to a healthy but also to a happy childhood. Despite the positive impact of happiness on the lives of children, we conclude that happiness cannot be incorporated into a functional theory of justice, since it does not fully meet the criteria of objectivity, measurability and influenceability.