Topic: Corporal Punishment (Re: Our response to Dmytri Kleiner's misunderstanding of money - page 22. (Read 24725 times)

I'm glad to see a couple of thinking adults have joined the coversation.


Okay, if they are their own property at birth, why is it my responsibility to do anything?  I know, rationally, that they exist as a result of my own actions, and that they will likely perish without my parenting.  But if they are my responsibility, how am I not the slave, then?  And what about my religious perspective argument "All children are God's children, and I'm his representative"?

Again, I'm not pulling these arguments out of my rear.  All versions of the pro-corporal punishment argument that I have thus far presented have already been argued extensively by libertarian philosophers for decades.  Pre-age-of-reason children remain an unresovled issue.


Why is behavior conditioning not morally acceptable?  You know, Myrkul, that stating your position, even repeatedly, doesn't an arguement make.  As for reasoning with a toddler, this is possible & desireable under ceratin conditions and with certain children; but it does not apply to all situations or all children.  I'm arguing that corporal punishment, used sparingly, is an effective method of behavior modification and that it's use (as a last resort) does not qualify as abuse.  Others are arguing that corporal punishiment is always and in every situation abuse.  That's an absolute position to take, and there are very few absolutes in the real world.


But what if simply telling them does not drive that point home?  What then?  If you do exactly as you say, and never utilize corporal punishment as behavior modification despite the fact that your child repeatedly ignores your verbal warnings of the potential for great harm, and he finally runs out in front of traffic and is killed.  Have you, then, not failed as a parent?  How is that not neglect?


Certainly as soon as that is possible.  But what if it's not?

There's an interesting thread in here somewhere. As a quick straw poll, who here actually has kids?

It's interesting to me as I'm raising a 2-year-old at the moment, and persuading them to do or not do things is a fascinating challenge. I tend away from using extreme physical power not because I'm ethically against it, but because I don't believe it's an effective teaching tool. In other words, I don't believe that tying together a particular target (the child) in a particular situation with physical force from a particular person (me) encourages the child to think for themselves. And at the end of the day, there's no way I have time or patience to tell them what they should or shouldn't do as new situations come up.

But that's also a general issue around judgement. I do not believe judgement should be assessed from an "imaginary" point of view, ie. imagining what someone else would like us to do. Survival requires adaptation and learning. Experimentation and subtle, Bayesian-style feedback is far more important than the social judgement invoked whenever one person directly uses extreme force - physical or mental - on another.

Obviously, though, I have to use some kind of "force" to influence my child's behaviour, otherwise they probably would get run over indeed. However, the key point is that this force is always appropriate force - appropriate to avoiding a situation getting worse.

Crossing the road is a good example. You could spank your child to be afraid of running into roads. Or you could introduce them to roads in a safer manner - even hand-holding is a form of "corporal" power in this case (as it physically restricts a person's movements), as is putting a child on your shoulders. However, they have far subtler effects and side-effects than extreme physical power.

This spectrum between the child doing what it wants, and forcing them to do otherwise, is what I would call "civility" but obviously that's just a personal definition. The child is free to explore within limits, and in doing so understands why those limits exist through experimentation over time. And pushes through those limits.

It has nothing to do with "ownership" and "rights". It is merely finding an effective way to ensure the longevity of one organism within an environment. From an effectiveness perspective, "owning" your own body is not as useful as knowing how to take care of it. I own a car, but it still gets dirty and runs out of oil. Would I feel more responsibility for it if I was borrowing it? Or would I feel more if I wanted, for some reason, the car to be running in 5 years' time, regardless of who owned it?

To bring that back to the purpose of money, I believe the essential point to be whether money allows us, as its users, to exist in the long-term in our environment. The interaction that decides how our monetary system(s) judge our behaviour as a whole, and what feedback we receive for our actions, is really what we're discussing here.

More later maybe.

You never "own" the neighbor, or his kid. But third-party defense is the same whether the victim is an adult or a child, and whether or not the aggressor is his parent.

Of course, like any third-party defense situation, you're likely to end up having to defend yourself, too.

As to Sv. Peters' "counterargument," there's plenty of operating space between "Somebody gonna get hurt real bad." and "Fuck you, mom!" Just because you shouldn't beat them doesn't mean you should let them run all over you. It is, after all, your house, not theirs.

Child does something I don't like... the only solution is violence.

http://fdrurl.com/bib

I still have things to learn about that sort of thing, I did watch a very interesting video just recently, it has a lot of emotional argument as you'd expect but it did make an interesting point about the trauma that physical abuse from parents causes to children as well as actual damage to the brain?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NrVMGmsHmo

I'll have to look up more stuff about this, it was about the Judge William Andrews case where he beat his disabled daughter allegedly for filesharing.

I'm pretty sure they have been abused so extensively as to conclude that abuse is okay.  Every child abuser was a child abuse victim himself.  There is no such thing as the mythical beast that abuses children but wasn't abused himself.

The difference between a person who beats up children and a person who doesn't beat up children is simple: the brain of the person who beats up children was damaged by abuse beyond the point of self-repair.  Those of us who were abused (yelled, beat up, or sexually) but didn't buy the bullshit "for your own good / it's a necessary evil" are the ones that got saved from repeating the cycle of abuse.

(Note: I want you all to notice how closely the excuses for belief in child abuse resemble the excuses for belief in statism.)

I have to agree.  Whoever said "Another person who can't form an argument" in response to an argument (I saw the argument, and I concur, it is an argument and it is valid) is clearly trying to derail and discredit ideas he can't meaningfully respond to.

This is true.  However, don't get your hopes up and think that "my children are my chattel" believers will be persuaded by this evidence.

For the record, user blahblahblah is on my ignore list -- I can't read what he says, and that's deliberate -- because not a few hours ago he exploded on a gratuituous tirade of verbal abuse and insults (standard statist response to being out of arguments).

You are brilliant and 100% correct.

Yep, this is probably what's going to happen in the end, the only way the moderator is going to be able to keep any moral high ground is if he keeps this thread open otherwise he'll have proved me right

One final thing I will say though before giving up on this stupid conversation, all these pro-corporal punishment advocates, I wonder if they have ever been on the receiving end of a punch? Or any other kind of physical pain? This I suspect is what enables them to be so arrogant about what they believe and think it's okay, I'd be very surprised if anyone who has experienced physical abuse would say it works as a method of disciplining children.

Before you go ranting about how great 'corporal punishment' is, try getting on the receiving end and experience it yourself first.

I guess another relevant question is at what point do you own the neighbor and his kid and have the right/obligation to step in.

Russell Peters makes a good counterargument:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn5jlrxcpkI

 enjoy

What's the point in arguing with someone who thinks using violence to get their way is perfectly acceptable in life? You're just an arrogant imbecile and nothing more.

That's possible, but because there are other issues involved (the mother also owns her body) the issue requires further scrutiny.

Bingo. I think you may have also defined a good cut-off point for abortion.

If ownership is defined as exercising exclusive control over a scarce, tangible resource then children own their bodies as soon as they develop a nervous system capable directing the actions of their body. This would place the beginning of self-ownership prior to being born.

That also shows why parents can't be said to own their children. Only the child can control his own body and parents are restricted to persuading, threatening or physically coercing the child into taking or refraining from actions. This is prima facie evidence of who actually owns the child's body.

They are their own property at birth. As the person who gave them that property, it is your responsibility to educate them on how to properly use it so as to not destroy it.

The "hot stovetop" example was used early on in this thread. It is morally acceptable to intervene to prevent damage to their property (ie, slap their hand away) but not to punish them after the fact. If your child is jumping (or about to) on a glass tabletop, it is acceptable to intervene to prevent damage by grabbing them off the table, but not to then spank them after the fact. Children are smarter than you think. As soon as they can talk, you can reason with them. You may have to use simpler concepts, but if you can talk to them, and they can talk to you, reasoning is possible.

Tell me, what does spanking a child after they have endangered themselves do, besides instill a fear not of the dangerous situation, but of the parent? The child very much wants you to be happy with him or her, and simply telling him or her that going out into the road like that could get them hurt, and their getting hurt would make you sad will amply drive the point home that running out into the street is not something Mommy and Daddy approve of.

If you want to raise self-owning adults, you should treat them as self-owning children.

The true irony is that I don't agree with your analogy because of your second point; but the nature of government force is no longer the topic here.

I have presented many other theories of parental rights, and every one of them has been expressed by libertarian thinkers as one point or another.  This isn't about how you feel about it, make a real argument.  Please!  Hell, I can do better than this arguing your side, but your side isn't mine.


You are correct, from the state's perspective, the state owns them and you.  Are you guys just spouting off without reading what I've already wrote about this topic?  If so, you should go back and read the arguments presented, all of which are in support of the idea that children are owned, and all of them are libertarian arguments.  My opposition has yet to offer anything other than an emotional appeal.