IS ALL FORMATIVE INFLUENCE IMMORAL?

Schools aim to exert at least two distinct sorts of influence over their students: influence over actions, and (to a first approximation) influence over them in respect of the kind of person that they are. I want to call the first sort 'behavioural influence', and the second 'formative influence'. This is no accident. It seems likely that the very point of schooling is to exert formative influences. This is because schooling aspires to be educational, and education is necessarily a species of formative influence (that is to say, attempting to educate someone is a species of attempting to make a positive difference to that person in respect of whom they are). But formative influence is an ethically sensitive area (as is behavioural influence): it can go awry both in respect of its ambitions, and of its methods. Thus, if schooling is to be ethical, it must at least be beholden to ethical standards of influence. More strongly still, I shall argue, it is plausible that being ethical demands efforts to attempt to exert formative influences: and could well provide motive to educate, and school, and not just restrictions on it.

2014

This paper explores the dierence between 'persuasion' and 'manipulation', both of which are instantiated in persuasive technologies to date. We present a case study of the system we are currently developing to foster local spending behavior by a community group | with sensitive implications for the community's sense of identity | and contrast our approach with what we would understand to be a manipulative approach. Our intention is to a) respond to anticipated critique that such a system could be interpreted as manipulative, b) present our argument for how persuasive technologies can be persuasive without being manipulative, and c) explain why, for this case study, its important that our approach be persuasive.

South African Journal of Philosophy, 2009

The principle that children’s freedom should be preserved in their upbringing is sometimes thought to provide an alternative to imposing a particular conception of the good on them. But to sustain the alternative we must distinguish between those desires and proclivities that are educated into a person and those that are his own. Several philosophers appeal to innate or presocial tendencies to ground this distinction, but that approach fails. The ability to exercise first person authority over a desire or commitment provides a better conception of what it is for such a state to be one’s own. But such desires and commitments are not distinct from those educated into a person. While the ideal of autonomy, conceived in these terms, can still provide some guidance for upbringing, it will not substitute for teaching children a conception of the good. We require further norms, and these must be derivative from prior norms, both first and second order, that tell us how to form and govern our own commitments.

Philosophy & Rhetoric, 2006

Language & Communication, 1984

in Kathryn Hytten (EIC) Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Education

When and why are coercion, indoctrination, manipulation, deception, and bullshit morally wrongful modes of influence in the context of educating children? Answering this question requires identifying what valid claims different parties have against one another regarding how children are influenced. Most prominently among these, it requires discerning what claims children have regarding whether and how they and their peers are influenced, and against whom they have these claims. The claims they have are grounded in the weighty interests they each equally have in their wellbeing, prospective autonomy and being regarded with equal concern and respect. Plausibly children have valid claims regarding the content and means of influence they themselves are subjected to. For instance, considerations of concern and respect for children confer duties on others to enable them to know important information and develop important skills. Children also plausibly have valid claims to be free from certain means of influence including indoctrination. This is because indoctrinatory practices threaten to diminish both their capacity to reason soundly, thereby constituting a wrongful harm, and their opportunities to form judgements and choices in response to relevant evidence and reasons, thereby constituting a wrong of disrespect.

Childhood and Philosophy, 2017

The thought that children should be given greater opportunity to participate meaningfully in affairs which concern them and to show their capacity for reasonable measured thoughts and choices has been displayed by many others (COHEN, 1980; FARSON, 1974; KENNEDY, 1992). It has also been suggested than in order to ensure that we are fair to all individuals, regardless of their age, that our primary consideration should be the capacity for decision making and agency. However, whether or not children are indeed capable of this kind of decision-making and developed agency is greatly contested (most notably perhaps by Plato and Aristotle), and so too are the reasons for this. In what follows then, I will examine the ways in which children may be encouraged to gain this kind of agency, and what our role in facilitating this may be. Moreover, I will show that while difficult, it is possible to approach ‘teaching’ young people to become autonomous agents in ways that do not interfere with their agency, either presently or in a future-oriented sense. Establishing this is essential as in order to make authentic choices, and allow for holding individuals responsible for their choices, they must be a result of the deliberation of their own choices, and not some other influence, be that external or internal. Finally, in relation to educative aims as a whole, I will follow Seneca’s statement above: that education should go beyond inculcating only learning and practises that are of immediate use to the institutions in which they are learned.