A few few questions resulting from the commentary on Mill's "On Liberty". Pg. 40 "Elsewhere Mill indicates that the benefits normally resulting form liberty do not accrue to the immature, who are not capable of profiting from free and equal discussion. Mill concludes that the immature may have their liberty intefered with provided that the end is their own betterment." Pg. 41 "Instead his point is that adults are permitted to restrict the range of children's freedom for the benefit of the child, whereas such paternalism would be impermissible if directed toward adults. Adults have a right to freedom. They cannot be intefered with for their own good."
My question is, Are there immature adults? My premises being that adults are members of society of the age of 18 or older. Also maturity being composed of an education, competence, and unimpaired judgement.
My next question being if there are immature adults do mature adults have the right to restrict the range of freedom of the immature adult provided that the end is the immature adults own betterment?
According to the nonconsequentialist argument education is a prerequisite to moral agency and the tool to develop competent and morally responsible persons. (pg. 46) Also on pg. 45 "Competence is a prerequisite of responsible choice." Can we then say that lack of an education and incompetence results in impaired judgement?
If judgement is impaired then according to the nonconsequentialist argument the mature adult would have the right to intefer with the choices and freedoms of the immature adult if they believed the choices of the immature where not to their own benefit.
I think it would be interesting to discuss what Dewey's thought would be on this. He discussed the roles of the mature and immature and believed that those of maturity and greater experience had some level of duty to guide those of less maturity and experience.
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2 comments:
This is an excellent post, as it raises some of the logical issues with Mill and the vagueness of the concept of "maturity."
Does Mill leave us open to paternalism to some degree? Is the high school dropout who uses payday lending less mature than the college educated person with the mortgage? If so, what is societies obligation to that dropout?
Speak up!
I'm leaning towards the possible fact that maturity may very well border a thin line between the following:
1. reaching a certain physical and mental capacity
2. How well "Trained" that particular adult is within the established society.
I certainly think that education is a pre-requisite of responsible choices in society, but I would not go as far as saying that incompetence equals immaturity. I believe maturity can manifest itself when we are capable of learning from the irresponsible choices made because of incompetence.
am I making any kind of sense?
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