ABSTRACT
Purdy claims that I assume but do not argue for the thesis that autonomy is the ground of equal rights. I do not assume this and so the fact that I do not argue for it is unsurprising. What I do do is rehearse two different views about where equal rights might come from. I suggest that either it is thought that rights are (in some mysterious way!) possessed by ‘natural kinds’ in which case since children are as much members of the natural kind that human beings are as adults, they qualify on that ground; or rights are possessed by individuals with a certain range of capacities. I indicate what this range of capacities might be thought to be. Principal among them would be self-consciousness and autonomy but not principally autonomy. I then point out that insofar as these capacities are possessed by sorts or creatures, they are also possessed in significant measure by children. So autonomy is not the ground to equal rights. The ground is either membership of a natural kind or the possession of a range of capacities, among them autonomy. My strategy is to indicate that one or other of these views is widely held and that neither of them give grounds for the exclusion of children.
