Slate's William Saletan has posted "The Mind-Body Problem: Rethinking the Age of Consent." From the article:
Having sex at 12 is a bad idea. But if you're pubescent, it might be, in part, your bad idea. Conversely, having sex with a 12-year-old, when you're 20, is scummy. But it doesn't necessarily make you the kind of predator who has to be locked up. A guy who goes after 5-year-old girls is deeply pathological. A guy who goes after a womanly body that happens to be 13 years old is failing to regulate a natural attraction. That doesn't excuse him. But it does justify treating him differently.
I'm not saying 12 should be the official age of "consent." Consent implies competence, and 12-year-olds don't really have that. In a forthcoming review of studies, Laurence Steinberg of Temple University observes that at ages 12 to 13, only 11 percent of kids score at an average (50th percentile) adult level on tests of intellectual ability. By ages 14 to 15, the percentage has doubled to 21. By ages 16 to 17, it has doubled again to 42. After that, it levels off.
By that standard, the age of consent should be 16. But competence isn't just cognitive. It's emotional, too. Steinberg reports that on tests of psychosocial maturity, kids are much slower to develop. From ages 10 to 21, only one of every four young people scores at an average adult level. By ages 22 to 25, one in three reaches that level. By ages 26 to 30, it's up to two in three.
Those interested in the history of the age of consent (not simply for sex, but also for making contracts, serving as witnesses, and being punished for crimes) are encouraged to read Holly Brewer's wonderful book (wonderfully available through google books) By Birth or Consent: Children, Law & the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority. From the publisher:
In mid-sixteenth-century England, people were born into authority and responsibility based on their social status. Thus elite children could designate property or serve in Parliament, while children of the poorer sort might be forced to sign labor contracts or be hanged for arson or picking pockets. By the late eighteenth century, however, English and American law began to emphasize contractual relations based on informed consent rather than on birth status. In By Birth or Consent, Holly Brewer explores how the changing legal status of children illuminates the struggle over consent and status in England and America. As it emerged through religious, political, and legal debates, the concept of meaningful consent challenged the older order of birthright and became central to the development of democratic political theory.
The struggle over meaningful consent had tremendous political and social consequences, affecting the whole order of society. It granted new powers to fathers and guardians at the same time that it challenged those of masters and kings. Brewer's analysis reshapes the debate about the origins of modern political ideology and makes connections between Reformation religious debates, Enlightenment philosophy, and democratic political theory.
Consent (informed or just consent by default arising from the principle of autonomy) it is not orthogonal to many issues debated in contemporary free will studies.
If we assume willed action or just the capacity to form beliefs and act upon them in pursue of some goal as an expression of free will, in its political dimension, any interference or external force acting against it, is catastofric for the individual.
I think that acknowledge the social construction and historical perception of ceratin phenomena is very helpful.
It is tremendous how change the notion of responsibility over the years as Brewer´s analysis shows !
Although i think free will is matter of biological investigation (stressing primordially the cogntive and emotinal factors not the historical) and what mechanisms in our mind/brain allow the execution of free will actions, always if the physical laws could let room to free will despite determinism, it is interesting to notice that responsibility, consent autonomy and many other "capacities" have their economic and social facets.
Posted by: Anibal | 10/02/2007 at 01:18 PM