On child agency and moral responsibility: do children possess sufficient capacities for moral agency?

• Main Author: Ting, Jermaine Shi Jie
• Other Authors: Melvin Chen
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Moral agency; Child agency; Moral responsibility; Prosocial behavior; Moral transgressions
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174513
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

It is often postulated across prominent texts and philosophers that children do not have sufficient capacities that are central in grounding moral agency. Thus, children cannot be held morally accountable for their actions. In this paper, I challenge this idea and posit that children can have access to moral agency as they can possess a sufficient degree of capacities that entail a possession of moral agency, namely: to reason, to exercise self-control, and to deliberate. Although these capacities have yet to be as fully developed as an adult’s, the extent in which they have developed are sufficient for an access to moral agency. As a result, they can be moral agents who can be held at least partially morally responsible for their actions. I will demonstrate these points with references to empirical research on developmental psychology to augment my claim. I also demonstrate in my rejoinder that children are often met with moral praise after their engagement in prosocial behavior, and their disposition to receiving moral praise should likewise entail their ability to receive moral blame as well. In other words, children can be morally responsible, which necessitates their status as moral agents.