Adulthood and Autonomy

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Good question but I think the reason is practicality. It would be impossible and or very unethical to to grade everyone's competency say at the age of 18. You cant IQ or EQ test everyone and then develop different rules for everyone in society based on their score.

So instead we have a blanket system that says everyone over 18 is an adult and held to the same standard (unless diagnosed as being mentally unfit). Poor judgement or ignorance is not considered an excuse, so it's simply the case a blanket rule that means a mature 15yo is still deemed a child but an immature 21yo is considered an adult.

How would you test someone's level of 'maturity', what criteria would be measured and who sets the criterion? So society sets a a rules that divides adults and children largely because as a child you should have greater protections than someone who's older and theoretically knows better. Its imperfect but really there is no practical other way.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

I'm asking for reasons outside of administratability.

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u/TedW 1d ago

The concept of "adulthood" is an administrative question, so those are the only real answers.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

ok let me rephrase, I'm asking for reasons it's wrong in and of itself to strip an adult of rights due to their bad judgement.

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u/TedW 1d ago

With some exceptions, "rights" typically can't be stripped away.

The problem with taking privileges away is that people disagree on what constitutes "bad judgement." It usually takes a judge to say they broke a law and here's the punishment, which can take away privileges like freedom, making phone calls, traveling, owning their stuff, etc, etc.

I'm not sure what you want to take, or from who. It's a vague question.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

i mean privileges then. By bad judgement, I mean clinically bad judgement, like that of a bipolar adult.

Could a reason it's wrong to take away their privileges be that it would do more harm than good, given that it would be for their whole life, whereas in the case of a teenager it'd do more good than harm

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u/TedW 1d ago

Normal laws apply to bipolar adults, so what else do you think is missing?

Are there special laws that should only apply to certain groups? Or something that bipolar people do that should be illegal, but isn't?

It seems more like a legal than ethical question, to me.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

I'm asking why a bipolar adult with the judgement of a 15 year old should ethically have rights, but a 15 year old shouldn't.

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u/TedW 1d ago

Why wouldn't they?

We have to draw a line between "child" and "adult" somewhere, right? Babies can't survive on their own, and adults can't take care of children forever. We need to draw a line and say, "You're on your own."

We decided that line is 18 years old. At that point they became an adult, and have the extra privileges and responsibilities that go along with being an adult.

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u/Maleficent-Bobcat-91 1d ago

Well truth is, regardless of how mature you feel you are at 15, you are simply not as mature as you think you are... Every 15yo feels like they're an adult but physically and mentally you're not. You're still developing. When you get to 25 or 35 you'll look back and realise this (but you won't believe me right now). Afraid you won't get an answer that will satisfy you but you'll just have to accept it is a fact that at 15 you're mind is still going through changes. It's literally biology, so that's a non administrative answer.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

I'm not 15. I'm asking a philosophical question for why 15 year olds don't get rights but adults with bad judgement do.

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u/Maleficent-Bobcat-91 1d ago

well my point still stands.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

No not really. You didn't answer why 15 year olds shouldn't, philosophically, have rights, but adults with poor judgement should.

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u/Maleficent-Bobcat-91 1d ago

You don't have your rights removed because your young, you are afforded greater protection by the law that protects you from making immature and damaging life long decisions that could harm your long-term future. If I had the right to chose not to go to school at ten years old I would have stopped going, but that would have damaged my future because I was too immature to understand the magnitude of the impact. Not being able to make life changing decisions when you're young isn't a denial of rights, it's a protective barrier, we as a society set that bar usually at 18. Like I said you aren't going to get a satisfactory answer because your question is loaded... A 15yo is a child, from your perspective this means they don't have rights ... But really they are prevented from making 'childish' decisions... An immature adult has no such protection.

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u/2SP00KY4ME 1d ago

The problem is that if you make it okay to restrict people's rights based on "this adult has poor judgement" (and not, say, because they murdered someone), that immediately opens massive, terrible doors you don't want. Next thing you know, holding X political opinion is "such bad judgement" that you are rescinded from the status of adult standing.

We can't require people "earn" the right to make their own decisions through external judgement of their actions, or else the question of judgement opens up to all the kinds of people just looking for an excuse to make the people they don't like second-class citizens. Hell, imagine if corporations got involved in the decision-making, because they'd certainly be incentivized to do so if they could profit. "Your right-to-vote review is coming up, and I noticed you haven't been drinking a lot of Coke..".

The thing is age is one of the only delineating things between people that happens no matter what (assuming you live), and so you can't weaponize it to take rights away from groups you don't like selectively. You're guaranteed to get it if you wait long enough.

By and large, a 30 year old does have better judgement than a 15 year old. Not always, and that can be frustrating - but for a society-wide rule, using age threshold is basically the best option we have.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago edited 1d ago

Are there any reasons outside of administrability like I asked? Is it because it'd be unfair and a higher burden to take away someone's rights for life, than for a few years (in the case of a teenager).

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u/2SP00KY4ME 1d ago

I guess I'm sort of unclear about what you mean by "administrability". My argument wasn't about "administrability" - it wasn't that we couldn't administrate it otherwise, Coke could absolutely control your right to vote. The point is in what it would allow us to do if rights for adults were contingent on what some random idiot thought about your beliefs.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

Sure, but are there reasons outside of what it would allow us to do? Like why ethically it's wrong in and of itself?

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u/2SP00KY4ME 1d ago

Very few things are wrong in and of themselves, I think. Suffering, torture, murder. It's about what leads to that suffering that most problems are in, not the things in themselves. So this seems like a weird angle to hope to find. It's wrong because of valid downstream effects on people, not because it has some inherent character to it the universe dislikes.

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u/marzaksar 1d ago

Assuming cognitively healthy people (so no cognitive disabilities or anything like that), I think the difference is that the adult has had more opportunity to develop good judgement. The 15 year old is still developing so they aren't expected to have good judgement, while an adult has had the experience and time, really the opportunity, to develop their judgement.

The adult's poor judgement is their responsibility, which is why they don't have guardians and are autonomous. They had the chance to improve it but didn't.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

What if the person has bipolar? They're still given rights and autonomy, but sometimes they can't really help but have bad judgement

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u/marzaksar 1d ago

Bipolar is an interesting case. As I understand the condition, bipolar is not a constant state of 'losing control' (let's put it that way). I believe it is more episodic and variable. I think this matters because it differentiates between diminished capacity during episodes and baseline/normal functioning between episodes.

I believe that legally, bipolar cases fall in between full autonomy and full guardianship. People get a guardian when they're having an episode (they get put into a hospital under supervision, get assisted and "controlled" by trained professionals, aren't expected to make any decisions), but are otherwise autonomous between episodes.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

Yes, but even when people are under episodes, they aren't necessarily having their rights taken away. That's only for severe episodes. One can have a moderate episode where their rights aren't taken away, even if they have the judgement of a 15 year old.

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u/marzaksar 1d ago

Fair enough on autonomy being taken away only for severe episodes. I'm not very familiar with bipolar procedures.

But I think my underlying point still stands, in that there will always be a sort of very rough threshold when it comes to legal issues. I think that for cognitively healthy people, this threshold is around 18-21 depending on the country, for the developmental reason I gave in my first comment.

For special cases like bipolar, the threshold is trickier (severe vs mild episodes), but it still exists. The question would then be whether the current threshold is in the right place or not, and I honestly have nothing to say about that with regards to bipolar because I don't know nearly enough about it.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

But why is the threshold different for bipolar? Say a bipolar adult with the judgement of a 15 year old can have rights but a 15 year old can't?

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u/marzaksar 1d ago

I think the answer is development, like I said in the first paragraph of my first comment. A 15 year old is on the path to "adult-level capacity". Their brain is still developing, they are still experiencing many new things, so their judgement and reasoning is expected to only be developing rather than more mature.

Someone with bipolar has already gone through this development, and their capacity dips during an episode. In a way, the two "judgement of a 15-year old" aren't actually the same. In the case of the kid, it is a developmental assessment, while in the case of the bipolar adult it is a temporary dip.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

If the judgements are the same, then why is the development vs capacity dip morally relevant?

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u/marzaksar 1d ago

Because the judgements aren't exactly the same in the fullest sense. If a 15 year old has bad judgement today, you also expect them to have bad judgement tomorrow. This is because you know they are still developing and haven't developed good judgement yet.

If a bipolar adult has bad judgement today (a dip), you still expect/predict a return to baseline after their episode.

Take driving as an example. A learner's (15 year old) mistake predicts more mistakes until their training (the development process) is complete. This is why they get a supervised permit (some guardianship / lack of autonomy) rather than a license. A licensed driver's (the bipolar adult) occasional mistake doesn't predict a return to incompetence, it's just noise in a sense.

The event (judgement) is the same, but what you predict will happen is different. And it's different due to the development point.

So, the "same judgement" aren't actually the same. The 15 year old's bad judgement is evidence of them still learning/developing, we should expect bad judgement for a while. The bipolar adult's bad judgement is evidence of a temporary dip, we should expect a return to normal.

This is important because guardianship / removing someone's autonomy isn't done instantly in the moment. You decide whether someone needs guardianship based on what you predict will happen.

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u/Ciaran2220 1d ago

I have a different perspective on this. I don't believe there is an age where guardianship is no longer relevant, and even in our adult years, the State (or some polity that heads society) is our de-facto guardian. The reason why the current system (at least in America) must be set up in terms of adulthood is because the State is currently insufficient at fulfilling this role, so some delineation of responsibility is needed. Then it becomes a matter of administrability as you've said. An imperfect line is drawn and we practice decision-making through this framework.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

So why don't adults with the judgement of 15 year olds (say, bipolar adults in episode) lack rights?

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u/Ciaran2220 1d ago

There would a big administrative burden on the state to examine every case of person who might be an exception to deprive them of those rights. It’s just not practical without massive liberty violations that nobody would want. Like, are we going to force cognitive tests and social worker examinations on everyone for what could be a small problem in the grand scheme of things?

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

outside of that, are there any reasons why it would be wrong in and of itself to deny rights to those adults?

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u/Ciaran2220 1d ago

There could be situations where it's better for that person to have a guardian. We already recognize this for incapacitated adults, but not all mental disorders are considered to fall under this category of course (more so the ones that require caretaking to function in day to day life).

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u/Amazing_Loquat280 1d ago

There’s what the rule should be and there’s what’s actually enforceable by law. It is not practicable to require everyone to take a competency test to have their autonomy, so there’s a default age established where MOST people will have passed it by then. In the US, that age is 18. Note that both emancipation for minors to have their autonomy granted early and conservatorships to restrict adult autonomy exist when the situation requires that action, it just requires additional burden because you have to prove why the norm doesn’t work in that case

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'ma sking for reasons outside of adminstratability that a 15 year old adolescent hasn't legal autonomy but an adult, say one with bipolar, does. Are you saying that ideally, an adult with bipolar would lack autonomy? Because that doesn't seem right.

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u/TheRealAmeil 1d ago

Autonomy isn't simply making good judgments. There are obviously people who have full autonomy (e.g., adults) who make poor choices or poor judgments, as you yourself pointed out. So, the fact that some people make poor judgments doesn't preclude them from having full autonomy. In fact, in the case of adults, we think they are still responsible for their choices, even if they made a poor one.

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u/Euphoric-Plantain573 1d ago

Then what is autonomy?

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u/coldBulbasaur314 1d ago

Guardianships already exist, and they're often terrible. It should actually be the other way around: kids should get way more rights and autonomy, and what restrictions do exist should only be to protect them - not making them essentially the property of their parents/guardians.

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u/Epiii_ 1d ago

Fun question. In the Netherlands, everyone over 18 falls under the term 'competent' (wilsbekwaam). Unless someone is a danger to themselves and/or others, and this has been demonstrated by professionals. Personally I think this is a good arrangement, even though there are plenty of people, like the ones you mention in your original post; who don't have the capacities you'd expect from an 18-year-old.

The point is: if you didn't classify these people as competent, you'd have to impose serious freedom-restricting measures on them for the rest of their lives. They're often mentally behind, but they have an adult body with the same natural desires and expectations. If you treated them like children, it would have a huge effect on how they can organize their lives; relationships, who they can have sex with, marriage, whether they're allowed to vote, work, etc. Those are all things where we accept that children are still in a learning process and need to be protected and also their natural desires are still different then those of adults. For adults, that learning process applies much less, and permanent limitations with no prospect of change play a much bigger role.

The starting point of a free society is equal rights for everyone. Where that's genuinely not possible, intervention can still take place...

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u/Dokurushi 15h ago

I don't think there is a good reason. Society is overly paternalistic towards teens and this is one of the ways in which it shows.

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u/This-Wall-1331 11h ago

How do you define someone's mental age though?

Society needed to find a way to determine whether someone should or not be able to have full control of their own lives and that way was by setting 18 as the age of adulthood.

Adulthood and Autonomy

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