STer

Exactly the issue I raised repeatedly in this thread just in the last week or so http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/37876-does-the-peaceful-parenting-philosophy-have-sympathy-for-miserable-parents-on-louis-ck/ My raising of the issue was not appreciated. But I agree with you that it is a very important question.

I'm sorry but I don't feel this thread is productive anymore. I've said what I have to say on this and I've said it multiple times. And I still feel it is being misinterpreted. I don't have the time or energy to keep clarifying it again and again. And if that wasn't enough, the implications that I would spend all of this time and energy sharing my thoughts not in good faith or that I'm intentionally misunderstanding things you say would put it over the top. If that is what you believe, then I don't think you should be too bothered if this stops here. I didn't want you to think I ignored your reply. But I'm just not interested in continuing in this fashion anymore. Perhaps this kind of a conversation would work better in some other medium. But as a forum thread, I don't think it's doing much beneficial for anybody involved in the discussion. So please forgive me if I bow out at this point.

What I'm hung up on is people making any statements about what people know or what controls they have based on nothing but personal opinion. That is not empirical. So those statements should not be put forth as if they are more than personal opinion. I didn't say whether people have control or not. I simply said we should base our understanding of that on actual research, not guesses. You keep falsely claiming that I stated people don't have control. What I said is that it is not for us to guess how much control they have. That must be discovered through actually studying it empirically and we should accept what actual research shows to be the case. Please notice the difference there. I'm not claiming to have the answer, I'm commenting on the method that should be used to find the answer. You think someone saying "spare the rod, spoil the child" is empirical proof that they actually believe the opposite. How are you assessing that they don't actually believe what they're saying and are just covering up that they believe the opposite? Can you cite anything that shows that, or are you just guessing that? As far as empathy, not only myself, but Stefan and at least one of his guests, Mike Cross, have put forth lots of the research about psychopaths showing that they lack empathy. There is also research on sadists showing lighting up of pleasure centers in the brain when hurting others. There are threads here where I've referred people to books, studies, etc. on this if you'd like them. If you believe everyone has empathy, especially significant amounts of it, that flies in the face of quite a bit of research. Watch Stefan's videos about psychopathy and sociopathy. Beyond that, if you believe even among those who have empathy that their empathy always leads them away from hitting their kids, that appears to fly in the face of what many of them claim themselves. Many of the people who hit their kids claim that they do so precisely because they think it is helping their kids, not hurting them. Now you continually seem, without any evidence, to just claim these people are lying. When they post comments all over the place justifying hitting their kids and even attacking those who don't, claiming that what is wrong with the world today is not enough spanking, you say that this isn't what they really believe. The fact is you don't know what they really believe. But that doesn't seem to stop you from claiming to know. I don't think I'm going to post again in this thread unless some new people enter the thread. This has become a discussion between the same 2 or 3 people and I don't think it's going anywhere new. I think I've put forth my view and people who want it can read it. If anyone has questions for me, I'll respond. Otherwise, I think my points have been made enough times. 1) Protecting victims is highest priority 2) Discovering what drives abusers has a place in that it can help us improve prevention and protection in the long run 3) Understanding abusers - including what drives them, how much control they have or do not have over their actions, what they really believe about the benefits/risks of hitting children, how much empathy they have, and so on - should come from empirical research, just as our understanding of the damage done by abuse does. It should not come from speculation or personal opinions. I think these are quite reasonable viewpoints. If you disagree, so be it.

Xelent, I didn't say any of your posts rejected this. I specifically quoted posts from other people who made claims without any backup as if they were facts. You notice I did not post any of your quotes because you never did that. Your post specified that it was only personal opinion and anecdotal. I used your post as an example of what should happen. I was wondering if you agree with me that the other posts which I highlighted from other people in the thread require more empirical support. Again to be specific, here are two of the claims made in this thread so far: 1) "absolutely, everyone knows that hitting children is wrong. They know it like they know that the sky is blue. They know it like they know they aren't going to suddenly have gravity reverse on them." 2) "Full repression is impossible, for everyone. We agree there is a spectrum, but I would suggest that everyone has at least 10% control (the vague number I picked for no real reason). Everyone can get better. Everyone could choose to be a Buddhist monk and then gain control of more and more of their unconscious mind, until it is nearly total. " Do you agree that it is reasonable to ask for empirical support for those particular statements and that, if such support is lacking, they should be identified as statements of personal opinion, rather than facts?

Exactly. And nothing wrong with that as long as it's accurately identified as your feeling and not as an empirically-validated fact. But compare that to some others in the thread who are saying things as bold as: "absolutely, everyone knows that hitting children is wrong. They know it like they know that the sky is blue. They know it like they know they aren't going to suddenly have gravity reverse on them." That is a pretty bold statement to make as if it's a fact without anything to back it up. Everyone knows that hitting children is wrong with that level of certainty? Does a statement like that not require a lot of empirical backing? In a culture where the norm is people believing that hitting children is OK, and where many even think it spoils the child not to hit them? I think it's a rather extraordinary statement to say that they all know it's wrong like they know the direction of gravity. Or another person is saying things like: "Full repression is impossible, for everyone. We agree there is a spectrum, but I would suggest that everyone has at least 10% control (the vague number I picked for no real reason). Everyone can get better. Everyone could choose to be a Buddhist monk and then gain control of more and more of their unconscious mind, until it is nearly total. " Are these not statements that cry out for citation after citation? They seem to me basically made up. I agree with you, and have made the point repeatedly, that this discussion does little to help those trying to escape abuse in the short run and our priority should be on that, not getting tangled into these debates, especially with people who share our ultimate concern for the victims and could be mutually supportive in helping them. In the long run, however, if we are hoping to learn how to better prevent and intervene in abuse, understanding the facts about what drives abusers can be helpful and spreading non-validated speculations about what is driving it as if they are facts is not helpful and may even be harmful by driving us to use ineffective approaches. The reason empiricism is something I value is because I think that when you know the facts about something accurately, you have more power to help improve things with that knowledge. So I want to know as many facts, rather than just speculations, about what is going on inside abusive people as possible. And to consider something a fact, I need some backing to support it. I thought others on FDR felt the same way about what it takes to really consider something a fact.

Xelent, No you're still missing what I'm getting at. In this thread, several people have made statements about the psychology of abusers in general. They've made claims, which they've put forth as factual, about how conscious people are of certain things, how much control they have or do not have over certain things, and about the specific mechanisms by which people become unconscious of certain things. None of these statements was backed up with anything but feelings and anecdotes. For example, in one of your most recent posts, you said that when people are unconscious of an action, you feel it is because they are consciously choosing to ignore it. That is a claim about the nature of unconsciousness of actions. I'm asking if claims like those require backing with evidence. Should a statement like that require citing some research that shows that claim bears out? The issue of how you act in your personal life and who you reject is a separate topic. And I'm also not talking here about the activism discussion about helping. This is about the claims being made about the psychology of abusers in general in this thread. See what I'm getting at now?

No, I meant do you agree that our personal feelings are not sufficient for making general claims like saying that being unconscious of an action requires a conscious decision to ignore it. Of course, in your personal life, you can choose to reject whoever you want. I'm talking about when people are making claims, as if they are factual, about what is going on psychologically in abusers as general rules. Do you believe it's sufficient to just say "I feel that the unconsciousness is coming from a conscious choice to ignore."? Or do you think we need to base claims like that on research and evidence, not just personal feelings?

Oh I see. If they work directly with abusive people, you'd like to avoid contact with the abusive people themselves. Got it.

After all of this discussion, I am now able to boil this whole thread down to the one question I posted above. It seems to be the crux of the entire discussion: Do we agree or not agree on a standard of empiricism and evidence - a requirement for citing at least some form of valid research - when making claims about the motives and capacities of abusive people? If so, great. Let's have the discussion with some actual facts to back up our claims. If not, then people can just state their personal opinions and they are nothing more than speculative in my view. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they are identified as personal opinions and not discussed as if they are well-founded facts. If FDR is about empiricism and objective knowledge, as it claims to be, then I would expect this question to receive a resounding yes, we require backing for our claims. If the response is to eschew the need for such backing, then I must admit I'm confused about what this forum is really about after all. I always thought it was about empiricism and objective knowledge, so if I was mistaken about that, or if that only applies to some topics and not others, then I will have to come to a new understanding of the standards held here.

The point is that you are arguing as if this is just an impulse control problem, where everyone deep down knows what they're doing is wrong, and they should just engage their control and decision-making to stop doing it. I pointed out that is not the case. Many people believe what they're doing is right and they engage their control mechanisms to do more of it because of that. So it's not just a debate about whether they have 1 or 20 or 90% ability to decide. It's also a debate about whether they even know what is right and wrong in the situation. I argue that some abusers believe their behavior is actually good parenting. And I'm pretty surprised if people on this forum, who constantly post articles with comments full of people like that, deny that. You've misunderstood what I've said on so many levels I'm not sure what to say at this point. Even when I explicitly repeat over and over again what I'm arguing and what I'm not arguing, you just continue to claim something else. Again, it's ironic since I started posting in this thread to come to your aid, in a sense, because you yourself kept getting misunderstood. But I don't think we're going to come to an agreement. The intent doesn't seem to be to understand what I'm actually saying, but to try to almost insist that I'm saying something else even when I'm not. I have not argued determinism and I certainly didn't set up any new game of anything. My message in this thread is simply to say that we need to be empirical and objective about assessing the behaviors of abusers just as we are supposed to be with other topics. So once again, I'm not arguing for determinism here. If telling you I'm not isn't enough, then it doesn't really matter what I say. You'll read what you wish to read into it. If you can tell me what I'm arguing for, rather than me tell you what I'm arguing for, then there isn't much benefit to me saying anything. Finally, you keep claiming people have this % of control in particular situations. But the one thing I do hope we can agree on is that you're just making this number up out of nowhere. Your claims are not based on empiricism or research or really anything but what you feel or what you'd like to believe. I am arguing for empiricism and objective research on these topics. You are throwing out speculations that are not empirical and objective. And that seems to be the biggest difference. Unfortunately, just stating that you believe everyone knows this doesn't make it so. The fact that you debate with people and they manage to find a way around what you see as the truth certainly doesn't prove they know the opposite. And part of why Stefan convinces people about how damaging child abuse is is by pointing out the severe implications for brain development that it has with scientific research behind these claims. But you claim these brain development issues magically have no impact on the person's later views on child abuse, without any research to back that up. None of these claims are in any way empirical or objective. They are statements of opinion. My understanding has been that empiricism and objective research is the standard here. When Stefan talks about child abuse, he cites tons of research. The Bomb in the Brain series is full of scientific information to back up his claims. This thread is notable for the complete lack of facts or evidence to back up claims like "All abusers deep down are conscious of how harmful their behavior is and could just choose to change." If someone else came in making claims on any other topic with such a lack of evidence, you'd be demanding citations. But when we talk about the psychological drivers of abuse, suddenly no evidence is needed, just statements of speculation and anecdotal stories of personal debates with people. LifeIsBrief made it explicit that he doesn't back up what he says with research because he doesn't trust institutions. He seems to be basing his beliefs on Buddhism. If my standard is empiricism and objective research and other people in the thread do not require that standard of evidence, then we're speaking totally different languages. I think we should demand just as much research on which to base our view of abusers as we do to shape our views of how damaging the abuse itself is. If we can't agree on that, then that's fine. But that's what I'm trying to say. So do we agree on a standard of empiricism and evidence? If so, exhibit #1 is the significant brain development changes caused by abuse. If we don't agree on that standard, this discussion is basically pointless. Do you agree, though, that our personal feelings on this are not sufficient, so we need to rely on deeper research to unearth the truth about this? I'm confused about the last part of your statement. Why the specification of not wanting a relationship with them? Aren't people who dedicate their work to reducing child abuse exactly the type of people you'd enjoy relationships with? I'm just curious because that part of the statement seemed arbitrary and I wasn't sure what is was referencing.

The problem here is people are speaking two completely different languages. I'm talking the language of objective science. Some others are talking the language of words like "excuses" which have no meaning in science. My concern is understanding objectively what is actually going on in terms of the abuser, what they are conscious of, what they are not conscious of and so on and starting from the best factual knowledge base we can. This is the kind of thing being studied more and more in fields like neuroscience. There have been some interesting imaging studies of sadists, for instance. Many more such studies have been done and will be done. Neuroscientific facts do not excuse or not excuse anything. Those are value judgments people lay on top of things after the fact. The facts themselves just are. I would like to know as many facts as I can about the underlying mechanisms that drive abusive behaviors in different people so we can become better at preventing and intervening. That simple. You have not heard me say one word even relating to "excusing" anybody. Excusing is not an empirical or objective thing. If FDR is about empiricism, then that empiricism should also apply to understanding abusive behavior. You're right we do disagree. But I think we disagree even further than you think. You write as if all abusers believe deep down that their abuse is wrong and if only they engaged their control mechanisms, which you are sure they all have, they would stop. In fact, the situation is even further the other direction for some. As you surely understand from seeing how some parents react when these topics are raised, some of them actually don't believe their behavior is wrong. They think it's the height of good parenting. They may even believe it's necessary. They may even believe that it's the parents that don't parent the way they do that are the problem. Their motto is "spare the rod, spoil the child." They aren't embarrassed about what they do. They'd actually be embarrassed if their friends and neighbors found out they didn't parent this way. Some of them even probably meet on forums just like this debating in a mirror image fashion how the parents that fail to spank their kids could be so misguided and with some of them claiming that they're sure that deep down somewhere those parents know they really should be spanking them. On almost every article related to spanking that I see, there are lots of comments of people saying that the problem with kids these days is they aren't spanked enough. Do these sound like people who are just failing to control their behavior, which they really know is wrong? Not to me. Do you think they're all faking or do some of them really believe this? I think some of them really believe it, at least at the present time. So this is not just an impulse control problem. It's much deeper than that. It goes beyond even some parents being unconscious that their abusive behavior is harmful to having rationalized it to the point that they believe it's good parenting, even imperative to carry out, and that it would be harmful not to do it. I hear some people say "But there is so much parents can study these days to become a better parent." Yes, but a parent could easily get their hands on several books, talk to many of their friends and family members and have almost all of those resources tell them that they should do things that we would consider very unhealthy. So where is the consciousness? They're actually being told the opposite, that it would be wrong not to engage in these parenting methods. And again, I would say to go watch the Bomb in the Brain series, look at the significance of the impact on brain development that abuse can cause, because I think this is being underestimated. The changes in the brain are significant as Stefan shows in the videos. Then explain to me how a person who is severely abused, if they have such brain changes, can possibly be judged the same way as a normal person. They are basically the equivalent of having a serious head injury (some even literally have head injuries). Yet you talk about them as if they are still basically healthy and in control and aware of what they do. This is just denial of scientific facts about the extent of injury. And yet, if I use the exact same science to argue why parents must not abuse their kids, showing how damaging it is to the kids, then the same people would be completely behind that science. They promote the awareness of the depth of the injuries when it's used to argue to protect the kids. But, as soon as the abused child grows up, somehow they want to act like the injuries weren't that severe after all. It just doesn't work that way. You can't use some facts to make a point when you like their implications and then deny the same facts when you dislike other implications. You have to acknowledge all the implications of those facts. Not sure if there is much more to say on it. But this has definitely strengthened my feeling that these discussions are a sad distraction that end up pitting natural colleagues in improving the world against each other on issues that are tangential and minor compared to the good they could do if they worked together. The reason I posted a link to my old post about becoming more active in promoting healthy parenting is because I think that's where the energy would be better spent. I had hoped when I posted it that a lot of people on this forum, who spend so much time talking about how important it is to reduce abuse, would be inspired to get more active in supporting actual projects out there working on that instead of us just discussing these things on a forum. Instead, the thread got a glowing response or two and then just died. I'm not sure how to interpret this but it surprised me that a call to action in service of promoting healthy parenting more pragmatically was all but ignored in a place so dedicated to the idea of reducing abuse. Well it has been an interesting discussion. If you have more to say, I'll check it out and respond. But if not, hopefully, despite any apparent disagreement on these aspects, you see that in what really matters, a commitment to reducing abuse and protecting victims, we stand together. Disagreements on other issues around that should not separate people from working together on what really matters.

This is becoming so ironic. You started this thread and kept getting misquoted and complained over and over about being misquoted. I came in and mentioned that I also get misquoted a lot and how frustrating that can be and that I understood what you were saying, which had some merit. Now you're misquoting me in post after post Actually you're not misquoting me. You're just failing to quote me and then commenting on things I didn't say. If you actually quoted what I said, you would see that I didn't say what you claim. For example, I did not say that science will prove determinism. You misread what I said there. I simply said science will increasingly tell us what is going on in various situations, what the mechanisms are, whatever they are. I didn't say the mechanisms will prove to be deterministic or not. I'm not even saying the mechanisms in various situations are the same. I'm simply saying that whatever we discover, that's what we need to be willing to adhere to. We can't let our desire to have a certain ethical view override facts. I'm saying facts matter more than what we wish the facts to be, whatever the facts are. That's nothing more than a basic statement about being empirical and objective, rather than biased. The monks you point to, if they can control the things you say, would only extend free will to a little bit more. Even they wouldn't claim they have free will over every single thing they do. More importantly, those monks train for a lifetime to get where they are. And we have no evidence that everyone else can get to the point they're at. That is just speculation. So that example does not prove total free will. Even the monks themselves would not claim it does. And whatever it might prove about how much free will we have over which things, it doesn't prove is true of everyone, just those people. And that's what I've said all along in this thread. You can't make blanket statements about every person in every situation as if they're the same. You claim that you make all your choices consciously, which is a pretty incredible statement if you're a human being, but I won't even argue it because it's unnecessary. Even if it was true of you, that doesn't mean it's true of everyone else, especially someone who was abused to the point of brain damage. Finally, I'm going to emphasize this and hope you actually heed it. I am not arguing free will vs. determinism here. So if you think I am, you can be absolutely certain you're misunderstanding my post and should read it again until you see what I really said. Otherwise, you will be arguing a straw man. If you misinterpret what I'm saying to be that science will prove determinism and it's only a matter of time, then you have not read what I said accurately. Please don't read what I say and then try to argue that I actually did try to support determinism. Instead, I am telling you that is not what I'm saying. And what matters is my intent in what I'm saying, not your possible misreading of it. If I've been unclear in any way, then hopefully that is clear enough. I have been around here long enough to know not to waste time arguing free will vs. determinism here. So you can be quite sure that's not what I'm arguing and never has been. I'm frankly confused by why what I am actually saying is even controversial. All I'm saying is this: Some abusers are not conscious of what is driving them, the harm that their behavior is causing and of why they should stop doing it. I didn't say all abusers, I said some. I didn't say they are totally unconscious of anything, just about those few things. I didn't say they have no free will in life. I simply said they are not conscious of those things listed there. I also am not saying none of them ever will become conscious because some will. But some abusers at some points in life are not conscious of these things. Is your argument that every single abuser is totally conscious at all times of why they are acting as they are, how harmful it is and that they should stop doing it? If so, we simply disagree. I think I could show that isn't the case pretty easily using examples from many, many angles. And I will if you want. But most of all, I just want you to understand accurately what I'm saying, whether you agree or not. And I feel like I need to also state again very clearly that none of this in any way means the abuse should be tolerated. It should be stopped to our best ability regardless of these discussions. In fact, understanding the mechanisms of what underlies the abuse accurately can only help us in doing that.

Now you're misunderstanding even further. Free will/determinism is a debate about whether anyone has any free will over anything. I'm not even touching on that here. All we're talking about here is whether some people do some things they don't have conscious control over. I repeatedly said that some abusers are outright psychopaths. They callously abuse people with full consciousness of what they're doing. Some even admit to enjoying it. So I'm clearly not arguing that nobody consciously abuses. Some people do consciously abuse. However, what I am saying is that there may be some that are not conscious of what's driving them or how harmful their behavior is or of why they should stop doing it. I've backed that up in several ways. One, again, is Stefan's own work on the brain damage that can be done by abuse. Surely, there is a point at which the damage is severe enough to lead to unconsciousness in these areas. If you want, I can give even more examples of this, including some stemming from IFS/MeCosystem concepts which Stefan advocates. Another is the very concept of repression, which, by definition, means it is unconscious. I didn't say every abuser is repressing. But if any abuser is repressing, then they are by definition unconscious of that which they repress. In fact, that's the entire purpose of repression is to keep things from coming to consciousness that one's unconscious mind does not feel they could handle facing. This isn't even a controversial point really. Even the most fervent believer in free will doesn't claim we consciously control everything we do. They wouldn't even dream of arguing that a person can't get a brain tumor that changes their behavior in ways they can't control (and then the behavior returns back how it was when the tumor is removed.) We know with almost complete certainty that various events in the brain can change behavior involuntarily in pretty massive ways, including whole personality shifts. These are well scientifically documented. I doubt anyone here would even dispute that. So it's pretty important not to misinterpret this as an argument for determinism as a whole. You are framing it as if I'm making an extreme argument for determinism where there is no choice in the world. What I'm doing is the opposite. I'm refuting the other extreme, that in every case every person has full control of everything they do. Even if we have free will, we don't have complete free will over everything. We just have some free will to some extent over some things. Beyond that, I want to clarify one more thing I'm not sure you understood. I didn't say that the concept of responsibility is unimportant. What I said is that the debate about it - literally having these discussions about it - ends up being a distraction simply because people don't define their terms well, miscommunicate, and rarely ever seem to end up becoming any wiser from the discussion. And yet, meanwhile, they both agree the whole time that abuse must be dealt with. Neither of them are claiming it should be tolerated. Yet instead of supporting each other in helping to reduce it, they end up actually antagonistic all because of misunderstandings over definitions of terms. It's sad honestly to see people who should be great supporters of each other in improving the world end up debating endlessly over semantics. Especially since, if you cut through the difficulty understanding what each other are really saying, they probably agree almost 100% on what really matters. Finally, there is one last important point that must be made. You and Kevin both said something to the effect that "This thing can't be true because if it was true, then we couldn't morally judge someone." Well the truth doesn't really care if you like the implications of it. You can't refute something by saying "That can't be true because if it is I don't get to see things the way I want to." You must adapt your views on things like morality to the facts. The facts don't adapt to your moral views. Science will increasingly show us what is going on in the brain in coming decades. We may never know everything, but we will learn more and more about what drives people and perhaps about what they are and are not conscious of. Some of those findings may drastically alter our views of ethics and morality. If they do, then so be it. It is the farthest thing from empiricism or intellectual honesty to reject a new fact just because it throws your own personal sense of ethics into question. That's like taking Galileo to court because the recognition that the earth revolves around the sun isn't comfortable for your existing belief system. P.S. Sorry for the tl;dr. This is a really interesting topic and thanks for the dialogue.

Sympathizing or seeking to understand or just being honest about how much control someone who is abusive has or does not have over their actions does not have to equal tolerating or allowing their abuses to continue. The problem is that these things do go together the majority of the time in our culture. Most of the time, when someone in our culture starts talking about how we need to be sympathetic to the abuser, they do this without mentioning that we need to be even more sympathetic to the victim and that we still need to stop the abuser regardless of any sympathy we may have. So I think that's why some people, like Kevin, understandably react strongly whenever any hint of "seeing the abuser's point of view" is mentioned. But a really mature person does not have these things conflated. They can take an objective look at the abuser's point of view and situation, yet still act with complete concern in service of the victim. So I think it's important to consider the messenger. If a person who is a constant enabler of abuse starts going into the "We need to think about the abuser's point of view" speech, I'd get pretty antsy too. But when it's someone who clearly has even greater concern for the victim and is very clear that the abuse should not be tolerated, regardless of any attempt to see the abuser's viewpoint or assess their situation objectively, I see them as a rather enlightened person. Kevin, I don't think you're understanding the "repression" issue. In psychology, repression is defined as being unconscious. That's why we have two different words - suppression and repression. If the person is consciously in control of the process, it is, by definition, not repression, but suppression. So this isn't anything ostensible. If they have choice over the matter, then it isn't repression, it's suppression. These are well-defined technical terms in psychology. And it has nothing to do with "excusing" anybody. That's a moral judgment each person has to make. It's simply a fact that if someone is repressing, they are not doing it consciously or by choice because if they were, it wouldn't be repression. I hope that clears that up some. This is explained well in the first part of this page: http://voices.yahoo.com/what-psychological-repression-539296.html "Do you get confused by the difference between repression and suppression? Both are Freudian concepts concerned with removing unwanted or unpleasant memories from one's consciousness. Repression differs from suppression in that it is not consciously engaged. Whereas suppression involves the conscious desire to forget, repression happens subconsciously." LifeIsBrief, That is an ironic misunderstanding of what I said. What I said is that philosophically debating the meaning of responsibility and how responsible or not responsible the parent is is a distraction precisely because it ends up in...all of these misunderstandings and semantic issues and ends up draining energy better spent focusing on the victim. And you just demonstrated what I mean because here we go again...all because of another misunderstanding This discussion of "responsibility" is 99.9999% of the time just a reflection of two people using different definitions of responsibility. Dictionary.com lists 7 definitions for the word "responsible". So you can take the same person doing the same thing and say they are responsible in certain senses of the word and not responsible in others. Is this really worth spending time on? Especially when the two people don't realize they're just arguing because person #1 is assuming they're talking about definition #1 and person #2 is assuming they're talking about definition #3 and this is never made explicit? Can you think of any bigger waste of time? At the very least, if you're going to have a discussion of who is responsible for something, make sure and specify which of the 7 definitions of responsible you're referring to. If you don't do that, you're almost begging for miscommunication and pointless misguided debate. Personally, I think I'd rather judge who really cares about child abuse by their actions. I have more respect for the person out there taking action to protect children than any of us, including myself, debating how responsible abusers are in our discussions. In a forum like this, it can turn into some contest of who is more anti-abuse because of how loud and dogmatically they verbally condemn, as if the more black and white you treat the issue, the more righteous you are. But this is no measure of anything. Some of the people out there protecting kids on a day to day basis in ways far beyond anything we'd dream of doing are also not the type to be morally judgmental. They do it out of love and care, not out of trying to show off how righteous they are. Is our main concern protecting victims or is our main concern showing off how much we can verbally condemn the abusers? Not that you can't do both. But which is the higher priority?

Kevin, You seem to be saying that it's crucial that we focus on the moral culpability and continue to declare that the parents, no matter how unconscious some of them may be, are morally culpable. But when we do this, it just sparks the endless debate about what "responsible" means (it has multiple definitions) and all of these other philosophical topics. My feeling is that all of it can become a distraction from protecting children. It may serve some of our emotional needs to ruminate about the theoretical moral culpability of various abusers. It is cathartic to rail about how immoral they may be. But it does nothing in practice to help the children. It's not like us sitting here declaring the parent immoral has any effect on them. Nor does declaring them relieved of responsibility have any effect on them. What matters is the actions we take in service of the victim, regardless of what you think about the morality of the parent. If the child has cancer, I don't sit around debating if the cancer is moral or not because what difference does it make? The important thing is to intervene, not to make moral declarations about it. Even when it comes to prevention, what matters is understanding accurately the mechanisms behind things, not whether you believe they are moral or not. It is crucial that we learn more and more about what actually physiologically or psychologically is motivating the abuses so we can perhaps learn to better prevent and intervene in them. But this too is different than making moral declarations about it. What we want is insight. The children need protection from the abusers' actions regardless of how culpable you hold the parent morally in your own mind. I think you can hold them completely responsible or consider them helpless victims of their brains and still fight just as fiercely to protect the victims. We can spend hours philosophizing about whether the abusers' brain dysfunction relieves them of responsibility or not after it is no longer a risk to the child. So my point in this thread is that the entire debate about moral culpability is itself a distraction. It's not that it's totally unimportant. But it should be a low priority, especially because it's an eternal debate that will never be solved just by discussion. The only thing that can really solve it is when we can scientifically measure what's going on in the abusers' brains and how conscious they are. Until then, we're all just speculating. I would much rather we spent the energy talking about practical measures to help the victims than debating semantics about whether the person was "responsible" or not. I alluded to this in one of my posts I would really love to bring more attention to here. Promoting Parenting that Facilitates Healthy Neurodevelopment: Zeroing in And Getting More Active?