The First-Person Authority of Children

This is an open access book that addresses how we treat others and, in particular, infants and children, with first-person authority.

We respond to people’s first-person authority when we give our interlocutor’s communication of their mental states more significance in establishing their thoughts, desires, and feelings than if another person were to report those mental states for them. But what happens when our interlocutors are infants and children? Increasingly, practices of responsive childrearing ascribe first-person authority to very young children. Despite this tendency, philosophy seems to be one step behind. The accepted view is one in which first-person authority has its locus in linguistic expressions of one’s self-knowledge. This is an over-intellectualized conception, however, that consequently tends to exclude children.

By combining philosophical resources with empirical findings about the onset of human communication, play, and our nature as social beings, this text advances a non-intellectualized, anti-individualist, and non-adult-centered view of first-person authority. This is a view that both accommodates our daily experiences and provides material for advancing the philosophical debate around the phenomenon in an enriched and more inclusive way.

Cristina Borgoni holds the Chair of Epistemology at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, since 2018, following previous academic positions at the University of Graz and UCLA. Her international background includes philosophical training in Brazil, Spain, and England. Much of her published work focuses on mental fragmentation, addressing topics such as epistemic akrasia and cognitive dissonance, and exploring their implications for our understanding of implicit biases, as well as the nature of beliefs and rationality. Another central line of her research examines self-knowledge and first-person authority, with an emphasis on the social nature of the latter and its expression in individuals beyond the prototypical human adult. Borgoni also plays an active role in the profession, serving as a reviewer for numerous philosophical journals and research institutions. Additionally, she is an executive member of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology.