An article appeared in my local newspaper in Tasmania recently on the issue of smacking children. I’m sure you’ve seen similar ones every now and then. It included a smattering of comments and observations describing how people have different views about what laws or attitudes we should have about smacking children. But it was without a coherent thread of argument, and therefore failed to provide any real progress on the issue.
The reason for this lack of progress is the same as the reason your local philosophy café or philosophy-in-the-pub event never issues a conclusion or solution, or even an agreed phrasing of any question that it has addressed. There are a hundred and one different frameworks, assumptions, definitions, worldviews, or epistemologies that can be potentially brought to bear on any issue, and our philosophers – our professional thinkers – have not, in nearly 3000 years, even settled on which one we should be using.
I’ll get to why this is so shortly. But, in the meantime, I’ll address this issue of smacking children.
Western society is slowly but solidly changing. Physical violence is no longer the most widespread and approved form of interpersonal and societal control.
At an individual level, we no longer turn a blind eye to domestic violence, rape within marriage, bullying in our schools, dispute settlement by violent ‘trial’ or duelling, honour killings, painful or dangerous initiation rites at university colleges, or arguments settled with an invitation to “step outside”.
At a societal level, most countries have banned capital punishment and corporal punishment. They approve only of peaceful street protests and they don’t cane or hit school children with a strap any more. In some countries, such as New Zealand, they have even made smacking children illegal.
But that last change has come with much resistance from people who were smacked as children and claim “it didn’t do me any harm” or “they have to learn respect”.
Among the problems with this instinctive response to disapproved behaviour is that it often doesn’t change behaviour. Instead, it negatively affects the future relationship between the punisher and the punishee. And it very often occurs out of feelings of angry vengeance rather than as a calculated strategy to socialise the child.
But these cautions arise out of just one philosophical approach to the question – the utilitarian, moral consequentialist, moral relativist position – and the smacking debate has suffered from a mishmash of approaches as occurs with almost all ‘moral’ and, therefore, legal issues. We have left the field up to theologians and philosophers who have not been able to agree on even one universal truth, value, or criterion on which to make such decisions.
I need to justify such a sweeping, dismissive assertion about an academic enterprise that has occupied the minds and energies of tens of thousands of people for millennia – that of formal philosophy. Though I hardly need to shore up my parallel criticisms of theology, surely.
Throughout history, humans have tried numerous sources of knowledge, or decision-making or question-answering approaches. Those no longer at the forefront in the western world – hopefully because they didn’t work, rather than that they simply fell out of fashion – include divine inspiration, historical tradition, assertion by force or authority, sacred text, dispute resolution by physical trial, divination, necromancy, and many more.
The strongest today, perhaps through a process of natural selection, are rationalism and empiricism. The first of these does not refer to the modern concept of Scientific Rationalism, which is actually closer to empiricism and is espoused by the Rationalist Society of Australia. This type of rationalism is the old philosophical small-‘r’ rationalist position that is primarily in opposition to empiricism in that it asserts that the best avenue to solid knowledge of ourselves and of the world is through deep, intelligent thinking and the application of logic.
Small-‘r’ rationalists claim that this process, when undertaken by smart people like themselves, produces more profound, lasting, and reliable knowledge than empiricism, which relies on our senses, observation, and experiment, and can therefore be subject to hallucination or illusion.
This belief in rationalism as the best source of knowledge took off with Plato and has dominated all cultures, religions, and institutions since, until the recent rise of the scientific method – of empiricism and the acquisition of generalised knowledge by systematic observation and experiment. In fact, rationalism still dominates philosophy, especially metaphysics, which largely explains why, as asserted earlier, it has “not been able to agree on and establish even one universal truth, value, or criterion on which to make decisions”. This is because rationalist philosophy has no ultimate arbitrator of truth, or of answers or facts, because everyone has their own “deep thinking” and even their own logic.
This multiplicity of intuitive epistemologies, of avenues to truth and knowledge, chosen because they make sense or appeal to the thinker (rationalism), not because they “work” (empiricism), explains the mishmash of alternative, contradictory approaches to the ‘moral’ questions that you can encounter in any one article or discussion group.
They include those that focus on, and use the language of: 1) human rights; 2) legal precedent; 3) religious commandments; 4) gut feelings about justice, fairness and vengeance, often supported by anecdotes or opinion surveys; 5) cross-cultural comparisons and precedents; and 6) the social and psychological sciences concerned with societal protection, general deterrence, and behaviour change and rehabilitation.
Of course, we empiricists, scientific Rationalists, humanists, sceptics, atheists, and agnostics try to base our positions on the science.
Human rights are a convenient shorthand, especially among humanists, but they are still an intuitive, rationalist concept, and need to be justified and explained empirically by the science, else we have interminable arguments about which rights, and whose, should predominate.
Psychological science has empirically shown that, in the short term, hitting children does interrupt an unapproved behaviour, but, in the medium term, it affects the relationship between the hitter and the child.
Problems with legal precedent as a guide include the, inevitably, big gaps in precedent. Human behaviour is infinitely variable. With smacking, for example, precedents may not cover all ages and physiques of children, all implements used, or all types of misbehaviour. So judgements may seem inconsistent. For example, in the past, case law in Australia has deemed as unreasonable leaving a mark with a wooden spoon, throwing a book at a child, or a hard blow with a fist. But, on occasion, courts in Australia have deemed a slap to the face, chipping a tooth, or beatings with a belt as acceptable.
But a bigger problem with legal precedent as a guide is that, as described earlier, societal attitudes and conditions change over time, and relying on precedent by definition entrenches our laws and mores forever.
If you want to advance religious commandments and sacred texts as the basis for our epistemology and decision-making, then all of the above is irrelevant, and we are no longer able to have a sensible conversation about smacking. Christians and Jews will simply point out that Proverbs tells us: “If you strike him with the rod you will save his soul”. (Note girls don’t matter.) End of discussion, unless of course you have a different Bible quote to cite or a different interpretation to argue.
Individuals and society, in general, used to rely on our innate feelings about justice and fairness. We all have them, even children from an early age. Decision-makers and criminal justice systems have historically operated on this basis, and still do in less developed countries. If you accidentally run over someone in your Landcruiser in the Papua New Guinea highlands, you’ll be lucky to see a court in Port Moresby. The locals and the relatives will quite possibly exact ‘justice’ on the spot, unless you can very quickly arrange for a ‘blood money’ compensation or restitution payment for the bereaved family.
An obvious problem with ‘gut feelings’ about justice, including on the smacking issue, is that people have a wide array of opinions on laws, principles, and individual judgements. For example, on smacking, a 2003 Australian survey found that up to 45 per cent favoured a smacking ban while just over half wanted to keep our current laws. Reasons given were drawn from religious beliefs, arguments about privacy and parental rights, and claims that smacking instills respect and is ‘effective’. Supporters of a smacking ban also cited children’s rights.
Psychological science has empirically shown that, in the short term, hitting children does interrupt an unapproved behaviour, but, in the medium term, it affects the relationship between the hitter and the child. Children stop caring what you think or want when you’re nasty to them.
In the long term, smacking models aggression and violence as the best way to handle problems. The overwhelming majority of perpetrators of domestic violence were beaten as children and/or saw it occur between their parents.
Teaching violence didn’t matter when society mostly operated through the use of physical force anyway. In fact, it was positively desirable to teach boys, especially, to stand up for themselves in order to get anywhere in life. Those that didn’t were seen as cowards and softies, unable to protect their women.
But, in modern technologically advanced societies, physical strength at work or in relationships is almost irrelevant. A ‘weakling’ can drive a tractor, fire a gun, or run you over just as well as a weightlifter. And modern democracies are ruled not by force but by persuasion. People have to like you to vote for you. So teaching children to solve problems by force is no longer good for them or for society.
But we still have all this discussion and disagreement and argument about such science-settled issues as smacking.
The sooner we leave rationalism behind, the better. It served us well enough for about 3000 years. We made some progress. But the real progress in life span, social harmony, crime rates, infant mortality, democratic governance, disease reduction, et cetera, has occurred since we developed/discovered the scientific method; since empiricism superseded rationalism.
Unfortunately, human arrogance and ignorance has allowed all people – informed and not (think Dunning-Kruger effect) – to continue to insist that they have worked out the answers in their heads. And everyone has a different answer!
Published on 2 November 2024.
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