Posted: May 18, 2017 2:25 pm
felltoearth wrote:felltoearth wrote:Here's one question that comes to mind. Do babies and children have free will? If so, and we view free will as a good thing, why then do adults not let children exercise their free will?
I'm going to bump this as I don't think it's that stupid a question. Do children have free will, and if so, why do adults curtail it?
Suggestions have been made in this topic that free will amounts to being able to imagine potential actions and predict the likely consequences of those actions. Any entity lacking the intelligence or knowledge to imagine future states would not have free will. A baby that has no idea what will happen next could not therefore have free will on those terms. This ties in with the concept of legal responsibility after some age but not before. Consider also diminished responsibility.
If you don't know what you are doing or what will result you are not acting willfully (and therefore lack free will) in respect of those consequences and are not responsible for them.
Does that seem reasonable?
As to adults curtailing what children can do, the adults are exercising the free will caution that the children lack.
In another sense the children have more free will in that they are not so constrained by rules and consequences as are adults. They are free to do what it occurs to them to do without worrying about consequences. They have fewer constraints and therefore more freedom.