Loren Pechtel

I've seen the police haul someone off for spitting near someone but not hitting them.

I also have considered filing assault charges against a guy who took a swing at me but missed. Given the situation I decided filing charges would bring too many complications.

BDS

Who cares what the legal definition of assault is?

Were talking about when it's OK to smack someone, not when it's legal to do so.

I'm sure it was legal to beat your wife, at certain periods of history. Does that make it morally acceptable?

Also, Farren, you're right that I haven't made a comprehensive argument in favor of the use of violence, just as you haven't made one in favor of non-violence. It's a principle of criticism that it is unfair to criticize a work of literature (or even a post) for what it does NOT say.

Adrian Selby

Some parents smack kids and they grow up well balanced, others don't do it and the kids grow up well balanced.

Alternatively, some parents don't smack kids and they don't grow up well balanced, and some parents do smack kids and they don't grow up well balanced.

Smacking can work, it can effectively demarcate to young, and I mean young children, because it establishes boundaries better than reason, because young children don't behave rationally, nor can cogitate about preferred courses of action where their understanding of the consequences is utterly absent, such as long term general consequences of getting their own way all the time.

Whatever method people choose, I don't see statistics that clearly indicate that smacking when young, occasionally and only where reasoning (largely just a case of communicating stern behaviour) fails, followed by the increased use of reasoning, stopping smacking altogether as the child becomes more aware of consequences of their actions leads in many or even a few cases to unbalanced, disturbed or psychotic kids.

You'll find in adults that are cared for due to handicaps, who are effectively without self control or aware of the consequences of their whims, are physically restrained and sternly warned about behaviour where it is problematic or inappropriate, such as, in my own experience as a carer, masturbating in public or trying to grab and pull hair. Reasoning does not work on children and these mentally handicapped adults who simply aren't aware of much more than that they have desires to do what takes their fancy.

------------
are you an incorrigible analytic?

Daleth

Well, y'see, you said:
Since when are slaps considered assault when they occur between adults. I'd bet that 98% of the times an adult is slapped he doesn't even consider filing assault charges.

Were you saying that it's not illegal if no charges are brought, or that it's not immoral if charges aren't brought, or that it's not assault if charges aren't brought? Lots of rapes are not reported either, but they are still rapes. Are you now agreeing that whether charges are filed or not, it's still assault? (BTW, no one was talking about the legal definition. Slapping someone is assault by the common dictionary definition, regardless of what laws may or may not exist.)

By you're reasoning, it would seem it's only moral if she really pissed you off. This is what people are trying to get you to explain. In the situations you've described, I understand perfectly why you'd want to hit the person who offended you. But I do not understand why it is moral to hit someone just because you passionately want to.

Would you agree that it's not moral to kill someone just because you passionately want to? If you do agree, then "because they arouse a passionate urge in you" is not the reason why you think it's moral to hit someone who's made you angry, so what is the reason?

Rusting Car Bumper

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. (I've noticed three uses of this fallacy in as many days on iidb. weird...)

How do you not know that parents who didn't spank might not have resported to it if their children had become sufficiently bad? How do you not know that the spanking parents were panking in response to their kids behaviour and were not the cause of it?

DC

BDS

To Daleth:

Daleth says, "Would you agree that it's not moral to kill someone JUST because you passionately want to? If you do agree, then "because they arouse a passionate urge in you" is not the reason why you think it's moral to hit someone who's made you angry, so what is the reason?"

But, of course, Daleth's conclusion doesn't follow from her premise. Nor did I ever claim that it's moral to hit someone JUST because he made you angry.

My position (which I am not going to argue from first principals here, but which I will at least make clear) is that it's immoral to hit someone if you're NOT angry (or at least immoral to hit your kid if you're not angry).

As to hitting people (or killing people) in general, my position is that it's sometimes morally acceptable, and often not. This is hardly a strange position -- most everyone agrees.

So what I'm saying is:

1) It's sometimes acceptable to hit people.
2) Kids are people, even one's own kids, however much they may try to hide it.

p.s. As far as whether charges are brought, my guess is that the reasons nobody calls the cops when they are slapped are:

1) It dosn't really hurt very much.
2) They think they deserved it.
3) It's not worth the hassle.
4) The cops wouldn't bother to show up.

My point was that the law is irrelevent.

Daleth

Oh. Why not?

Then what are you saying? You say it is wrong to hit your kids unless you are angry. You say fighting words sometimes deserve a fight. If it's not JUST because they made you angry, then what other conditions must be met before it's moral to hit someone?

You know, it is the moral foundations and principles board. If you really don't want to explain your principles, why are you posting here? If we don't understand the principle you're using when you say something is moral, then we can't have much of a conversation about it. You say it's moral. I say it's not. All done.

Clearly I'm misrepresenting your position, but that's because you've been unwilling to explain it.

Yes, but you're not saying when it's acceptable or why it is on one occasion but not another. My reasoning says that it's moral to hit a person when you need to do it in self-defense. This applies to children as well as adults, but with a child, there are almost no situations in which one needs to hit in self-defense. There is almost always going to be a non-violent alternative.

Can you give us an explanation like that? It is moral to hit a person when _______ .

BDS

Good God, Daleth. I have an OBLIGATION, according to you, to explain every part of my philosophy. As a new poster on these boards, I'm slowly becoming aware that a common posting style here is to avoid saying anything, and try to force the other person to do all the talking. Very well, but that doesn't make for good conversation, Daleth.

I'm under no obligation to explain everything to you, or to anyone else, particularly so when you haven't offered the slightest explanation of YOUR position. I don't even know what it is.

As to why your conclusion doesn't follow from your premises, that's so obvious that it shouldn't need an explanation. Your premise was:

"If you do agree that it's not moral to kill someone just because you passionately want to...."

and the conclusion:

" .... then "because they arouse a passionate urge in you" is not the reason why you think it's moral to hit someone who's made you angry"

The conclusion is simply a non sequitur. For one thing, "hitting someone" and "killing someone" are not the same thing. One might as well say, "If you agree that it's not moral to kiss someone because you passionately want to, then passion is not the reason you think it is moral to hit someone." The syllogism is gobbledygook, and makes no sense.

At least I took a position, Daleth, which was: It is unacceptable to hit one's children except in anger. This was meant to be a mildly witty aphorism, poking fun at the "dispassionate spanking" folk, but, for the sake of argument, I'll stand by my stated position.

However, from a strictly logical perspective, one cannot conclude from this statement that I think it is EVER acceptable to hit one's children, only that it is NOT acceptable unless one is angry. Any inference that hitting is ALWAYS acceptable if one is angry, or even SOMETIMES acceptable does not logically follow from my initial statement.

Daleth

BDS,

I have absolutely no idea what I've done to offend you. I've been trying to understand your position, and at the moment I don't. Right now all I know is what your position is not.

You are under no obligation to explain it. You are under no obligation to respond to me or to anyone else at all. I have never said you have an obligation to type a single character. I am not trying to force you to do anything. I have asked for more information so I'll know where you're coming from. Conversation doesn't work if you make assertions and others don't understand them. But if you don't want to take the opportunity to make your position clear, that is fine by me.

If you've read my posts than you know what my position is. I have said a couple of times on this thread that it is not moral to hit another person unless you need to do it in self-defense, and "another person" includes children. If you didn't get the principle behind that and you'd asked, I'd have explained it. If you wanted me to explain it just to put me through an excercise, I wouldn't. I wasn't trying to put you through hoops.

It wasn't a non sequitur at all. If you don't believe that feeling passionate about harming someone is what makes harming someone moral or immoral, then it doesn't matter whether the harm is great or small; level of passion is not the basis for drawing your moral distinctions. Maybe it's wrong, but it's not a non sequitur.

But you've said more than just that initial statement, and I've been talking about the full content of your posts on the subject. In addition to your initial statement, you also said:

• Occasionally smacking your child (as opposed to beating him) when he pisses you off is (as long as you don't do it very hard) both natural and healthy, for child and adult alike.
  
  Hey, there are times when smacking other adults is acceptable, too. Fighting words occasionally deserve a fight.

I do not believe there's any reason for me to respond only to the first statement you made on the thread, and here you've clearly stated that sometimes it is moral to hit your kids and sometimes it is moral to hit adults when they say the wrong thing. I don't understand why, so I asked.

At any rate, if it makes you that angry simply to be asked to explain your moral foundation behind a statement (i.e. "fighting words deserve a fight") then you're going to find that you hate this board. I am mild as a spring day compared to a lot of the folks around here. I don't know why you'd subject yourself to it, but that's your business. Have a great time. I won't bother you any further.

Dal

tribalbeeyatch

Post hoc but not ergo propter hoc, and not a fallacy at all.