Kid's Corporal Punishment - a Risk to Mental Health

[stevevw]

If that's what you've been saying, then it's inconsistent for you now to claim that there's a simplistic pathway from "negative" experiences to "negative" beliefs, to abuse.

I am not saying its simple. But what else could it be that creates a need in people to believe such negative and unreal attitudes and beliefs. If the person has to be primed to believe what they believe then they have to have had some negative experiences that caused them to believe.

Its not simple in that cognition, emotions, feelings, perceptions, conditions and beliefs all work together. These are the many factors that work together. Its not beliefs or cognition or emotions or conditions that work on their own singurly but together.

I am not. I am saying that your evaluation of what is negative or positive is irrelevant.

But the evaluation of what is positive or negative through the science and first hand experience is relevant and this gives an objective basis where we can say that certain experiences are negative as in have a negative effect on the abuser, the victim and household. Even a negative effect for society.

No, the point is that people's response to the "negative" experience is not uniformly "negative" in turn.

What not uniform as to how negative it is. Yeah sure, some people handle the negative experience better than others. But how is this negating that its still a negative experience. Remembering we have a factual basis for the negative effects.

And yet your contention in this thread has mostly been that it's not about attitudes and beliefs. So I don't find your position at all consistent; most of the thread you argue against attitudes and beliefs as important, but here you accept them.

Here you are creating another fallacy, a misrepresentation of my position. I have said all along and I can get consistent quotes throughout this thread of me saying that to understand why people, parents abuse and use violence we need to take a multifaceted and level view which includes the individual, family/relations and the wider social factors.

I have consistently argued that beliefs and attitudes form from our cognitive errors, emotions, perceptions. Why would I be saying that saying its not about beliefs and attitudes if I am arguing that beliefs are part of the process.

What you seem to be doing is interpreting my objection that beliefs are the only relevant aspect as saying beliefs are completely irrelevant. Which I am not. But rather that they are just one aspect of a complex process that involves experience, cognition, emotion, feelings, perceptions, and conditions.

The point is that this paper is one contribution to a complex and as yet under-developed area of investigation. It is not a complete analysis of what forms beliefs, much less the last word on the matter.

Actually I think it appears that our understanding was too narrowly focused on behaviour and not the driving forces behind behaviour. There is plenty of evidence that behaviour is driven by beliefs and attitudes but as the paper was saying not enough research on what actually drives beliefs and attitudes. Which is finding the determinants that cultivate beliefs and attitudes.

Thats why ironically I like your paper because its actually better explained than the ones I linked though they more or less say the same thing. I think the message is we need more research on the determinants that drive beliefs and attitudes as that is the root of the problem. They finish by encouraging more research.

As one aspect of a much larger and more complex picture.

Yes and thats the multi level dimensions for which the determinants occur. The individual, family/relations and the wider community or culture. The Ecological view which your paper referred to.

So there are interactions and determinants associated with the individual (experiences and their effects positive or negative), the family/relations (parent child dyad, family stability or conflict and supports) and the wider influences of society, norms, culture ect or social networks of support, socioeconoimic status, ect. These all work together to form the attitudes and beliefs positive or negative.

But even so, it puts the importance of attitudes and beliefs as the drivers of abuse, front and centre.

Thats the issue your paper was trying to point out. That we are focusing on a symptom of a deeper driver that cultivates the beliefs and attitudes. To truely understand why people abuse we need to understand these determinants that drive negative beliefs and attitudes.

I'm sure I've seen you argue against this repeatedly in this thread.

My only arguement about beliefs is disagreeing with you that its the only relevant or significant aspect of understanding why people abuse and use violence.

I don't believe that most abusers agency is compromised to the point that they have no choice but to abuse.

Yes I think theres varying degrees of compromise. How do you even evaluate what no choice means. I mean technically everything is a choice. But if your perception is distorted and your basing choices and behaviour on unreal perceptions then how is this an informed choice.

To make an informed choice one that considers the facts, the truth, all the information including understanding your own biases and self delusions due to experiences is hard for anyone let alone parents who have got to the point where they are harming their kids. Like I said or you said actually that abusers can truely believe that the abuse is good which in reality is unreal. So how are they making informed and rational (as in objectively real) choices.

But what you're ignoring here are things like cultural and social norms, which we know are a really important part of what's going on in belief formation.

Yes I have referred to this many times. You just want me to only speak about this aspect because that is how you see it but I don't see it that way. As abuse is a complex combination I am speaking through a multi faceted and level lens about the complete process ie experiences, (which will include experiences, cognitions, emotions, feelings, perceptions and beliefs.

I think this is important as otherwise we can get a skewed understanding of why people abuse and use violence. What your doing is interpreting that because I don't single out belief and attitudes and minimise or neglect the rest I am completely dismissing beliefs and attitudes. But I am not. I am just seeing it within a complex process where no single aspect is more dominant than the other.

As I mentioned earlier often the beliefs in certain norms like CP or Trad family setup comes from a rational place. So the belief in these things is not abusive. It doesn't itself cross the line into abusive attitudes of beliefs. So something destinguishes the abuser with others that makes them cross that line.

That is they distort rational beliefs into irrational ones due to their distorted psychological state. Thats the only difference. They are primed to distort things through their experiences.

That's not the same as saying every person who abuses has particular "risk factors." That is false.

So if the situation of abuse is bringing dysfunction and negativity onto the child and into the house perhaps effecting other kids do you think the parent introduced that. Do you think the parents must have had within her that same dysfunction and negativity within her. What was the state of mind of the parent to think and believe that the dysfunction and negativity they inflict is not actually dysfunctional and negative.

It's only an accurate statement if you both preface it with "in some cases," and acknowledge that "negative," and "unreal beliefs" are subjective determinations.

No it cannot be in some cases because logically an unreal belief can only come from cognitive errors or distortion or unreal thinking. If your not making cognitive errors you are then seeing things clearly and rationally and cannot possibly form unreal beliefs when it comes to abuse.

As I also keep saying and you keep repeating the fallacy that we cannot measure negative outcomes through science and first hand experiences. We can so they are not subjective determinations but based on objective facts.

This is not talking about changing stress levels; it is talking about the differences observed between people with different stress levels.

Yes its saying that lessening the severity of stress is associated with having more positive parenting attitudes (i.e., more appropriate parenting expectations, greater empathy, and valuing non-physical punishment),

So it is talking about changing stress levels in that lowering them can contribute to the difference between positive and appropriate attitudes and negative and inappropriate attitudes.

Sorry, I still don't agree, and you'll need to come with something more substantial than simple assertion.

So your now disagreeing with fundemental psychology that how we percieve the world through experiences positive or negative influences our beliefs. Why would I need to present evidence for such a well acknowledged and verified principle in behavioural sciences.

We use to think that all human behaviour was conditioned externally, from the outside world. Then a revolution happened and we found that there was this whole inner world that actually was the driver of our behaviour. Its just basic psychology.

This is irrelevant to the point I made.

How is it irrelevant. I said that its the persons psychological state and experiences positive or negative which forms beliefs and attitudes. You said "This sentence doesn't even hold up to basic scrutiny, because it rests on subjective judgements about "positive" and "negative" experiences and beliefs".

So I refuted that by saying we can test whether experiences and thinking are positive or negative by science and first hand testimony which qualifies it from the subjective into the objective.

That's not about removing stress on abusers. (In fact, for the abusive men it may well increase stress, at least initially, as their power is challenged). It's about removing power imbalance.

When has that ever stopped feminist and other ideologues who denegrate males especially white males. If it does provoke some reaction then your link and the Feminist and activists trying to equalise women are all promoting abuse and violence by pushing such a controntation.

I wasn't just talking about stress as the risk factors but all risk factors being reduced by restructuring as your article mentions. I said that women suffer economically which increases stress and makes it harder for them to be independent. So it also mentioned financial hardship with brings the distress.

That's not about removing stress either (and you're still missing the biggest point of that article, which is that the population without those illness at all were more abusive).

No thats a misreading. They were only talking about psychiatric conditions and not all other risk factors. They did not mention past abuse which is not necessarily a psychiatric disorder, they did not mention anxiety and depressive conditions, financial distress, family conflict, DV, ect these are all factors associated with abusive parents. Your conflating and misrepresenting the study.

The simple fact is they said that by treating parents who were psychiatric patients on release they were of no risk due to that treatment. Whether its stress for having a harder time due to psychiatric conditions, or the other risk factors like substance abuse or family conflict, all these were reduced which contributed to them not abusing.

The point was the psssychiatric condition itself was the risk factor that could lead to further complications and that treating that condition and not the belief or just the belief is what was reducing the risk and preventing potential abuse.

No; that's a careless reading of the article. Noting that abuse correlates with particular conditions doesn't mean that we can change attitudes and beliefs just by changing those conditions.

Yes it does. Thats exactly what its saying. Even your approach says the same thing but in a different way. They don't just go out trying to convince people and society to change their mind and beliefs. They speak of structural change, equalizing genders and parents and families to be more equal, to have more options, supports to cope because inequality is what disempowers and causes problems for people that mount up.

That is why at the very bottom, the ones most effected and unequal and deprived have the highest rates of abuse and violence and in some cases 98% of all abuse and violence is committed by the most disadvantaged and deprevated commities. As your own article says

The focus of the present study was therefore to utilize an ecological model to investigate caregiver, child, family, and neighborhood factors in relation to parental attitudes.

Lower levels of neighborhood satisfaction were expected to be tied to more negative parenting attitudes.

Families living in dangerous or impoverished neighborhoods experience are more likely to experience greater parenting difficulties, including lower levels of parental warmth and involvement, higher rates of physical punishment, and lower levels of parental well-being.

Dangerous or impoverished neighborhoods may also act as a source of daily stress that can impact parenting, particularly when compiled with other risk factors and sources of stress. Consequently, the environmental context is important to consider as a determinant of parenting attitudes and behavior.

 

[stevevw]

Directly reduced abuse reports.

No directly reduced abuse.

The review found that changes in income alone, holding all other factors constant, have a major impact on the numbers of children being harmed. Reductions in income and other economic shocks increase the numbers of children being subject to neglect and abuse, while improvements in income reduce those figures.
New evidence on the relationship between poverty and child abuse and neglect - Nuffield Foundation

Major reviews of children’s social care in England and Scotland have affirmed that family poverty and inequality are key drivers of harm to children. Changes in the economic conditions of family life alone – without any other factors – impact on rates of abuse and neglect. Increases in income reduced rates significantly. This is substantial new evidence for a contributory causal relationship between the economic circumstances of families and CAN.
https://research.hud.ac.uk/media/as...BetweenPovertyChildAbuseandNeglect_Report.pdf

There is a strong association between families’ socio-economic circumstances and the chances that their children will experience child abuse and neglect. This association exists across developed countries, types of abuse, definitions, measures and research approaches to both poverty and child abuse and neglect. This finding mirrors evidence about inequities in child health and educational outcomes. The greater the economic hardship the greater the likelihood and severity of child abuse and neglect.

Child Protection Plan rates in neighbourhoods among the most deprived 10 per cent in England as a whole were almost 11 times higher than rates in the most advantaged 10 per cent (decile) of neighbourhoods. That is to say, at a population level each incremental increase in family socio-economic disadvantage correlates with an increased chance of child abuse and neglect.
https://www.fatherhood.gov/sites/default/files/resource_files/e000003584.pdf

Preventing child maltreatment: a guide to taking action and generating evidence
Numerous studies show that child maltreatment is more frequent among poorer communities and households in societies with high economic inequalities. Measures to reduce poverty and economic inequalities ought thus to have significant effects in reducing child maltreatment.
Preventing child maltreatment: a guide to taking action and generating evidence

Barnardos submission to the Inquiry into the extent and nature of poverty in Australia is focused on children. Specifically, the impact of the extent and nature of poverty as a direct causal factor of child abuse and neglect.

By narrowly focusing on parental behaviours, without recognition of the ongoing impact of poverty and violence, child protection workers make decisions that often lead to removal of children into OOHC, while the family’s material deprivation and experiences of family violence are rendered invisible and consequently not addressed (Benneth et al., 2020).
https://www.barnardos.org.au/wp-con...to-the-extent-and-nature-of-poverty-FINAL.pdf

But evenso isn't reducing abuse reports a positive effect anyway. I mean considering a high number of reports are confirmed. Either way increase financial support or economic status seems to directly lead to a reduction is child abuse and violence.

 

[stevevw]

I agree. I'd also add good science covers as many variables as possible and no one study, or small set of studies, should be treated as definitive.

I am reminded of that movie, "Twins," with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito in which the former is raised in a "perfect" environment with piles of support and nurturance and the latter raised with the opposite. In the end neither turned out to be particularly healthy, moral, or spiritual. Forty or fifty years from now our children will be reading studies on the problems, the long-term adverse effects of not spanking, pain-free upbringing, over-nurturance and how bad eggs are for you

Good old nature and nurture. I still don't think we've completely worked that one out. I guess for now we just have to say its both having some influence. In some ways the so called perfect upbringing environment is itself a source of harm in that it protected kids so much it cotton wooled them from the realities of life. Now there's a lot of psychologically impaired young adults.

Parenting views held in the 19th century:

• Instill obedience by never giving a child what they want.​
• Fussy infants may be calmed by the administration of laudanum (an opiate).​
• Turpentine may be administered for tapeworms and mercury to treat dysentery.​
• Lancing open the top of a child's gums will facilitate the growth of their first set of teeth.​
• A child's arms should be tie to the chair when setting them in isolation (time-out).​
• Corporal punishment is acceptable only if the correct device for administering the effect us used (a thin strip of leather or a bedroom slipper are suitable), and never applied to head, ears, or hands.​
• A child's reading should be restricted to works of non-fiction (novels were considered corrupting and frivolous).​
• "Too vivid an imagination, if not judiciously checked, may tend to create an untruthful habit of speech in childhood which may continue to increase with years."​
• It's okay to threaten a child. "In the tale of Suck-a-Thumb, for example, Conrad’s mother orders him not to suck his thumb while she’s away, lest a tailor come and literally cut it off."​

I'll take a spanking, thank you.

lol, yeah there was some old myths going around. I remember the idea that leaving the baby to cry was popular. Yet the opposite was true to develop a healthy and secure attachment. So that screwed up a few kids and adults.

But I have a couple of modern ones. Giving children life changing chemicals that make them sterile and cause other developmental problems if they feel the opposite sex. Or cutting off their body parts for the same reasons without investigating the root causes.

What about scarey fairy tales like little boys can magically become little girls. This always goes down well at Drag Queen Story time.

 

[Paidiske]

But what else could it be that creates a need in people to believe such negative and unreal attitudes and beliefs.

It's not necessarily about "needs." People believe what their society tells them to believe, they accept the norms of their culture, without it being about "needs."

But the evaluation of what is positive or negative through the science and first hand experience is relevant

Science cannot make a value judgement of that nature.

What not uniform as to how negative it is.

No. Not uniformly "negative" in response.

An anecdote; my mother (the same one I've been discussing as abusive in various ways) commented to me not that long ago; "I have two children. One is a priest, and one is in prison. Was there no middle ground?"

Now, you could argue that what we experienced growing up pushed us to the extremes in our responses. But we have not both made negative choices in response. (Unless you want to think becoming clergy is negative, but I'd argue against that view).

Here you are creating another fallacy, a misrepresentation of my position.

If you feel I'm misrepresenting your position, then I'd have to reply that you have not been very clear or consistent in presenting it.

Why would I be saying that saying its not about beliefs and attitudes if I am arguing that beliefs are part of the process.

For a good part of this thread, you were pushing back against my arguments about beliefs and attitudes in order to argue that it was all about other "risk factors."

Yes and thats the multi level dimensions for which the determinants occur.

No; there are influences on our beliefs other than "negative" experiences.

Thats the issue your paper was trying to point out. That we are focusing on a symptom of a deeper driver that cultivates the beliefs and attitudes.

First, we have to get people to acknowledge that it's beliefs and attitudes, and not all the other so-called "risk factors," which drive behaviour. When that is accepted, then we can do the work on changing those beliefs and attitudes.

How do you even evaluate what no choice means.

We have standards, in law, for determining when someone is not morally culpable for their behaviour.

So how are they making informed and rational (as in objectively real) choices.

I'm not claiming that they're making fully informed choices. I'm just pointing out that they are making choices; choices for which we can hold them responsible, and choices driven by attitudes and beliefs which we can challenge.

Yes I have referred to this many times.

I have not once seen you acknowledge this as a significant factor in belief formation. You have, instead, put forward a model where "negative" experiences drive distress, which leads to cognitive and affective distortion and abuse; while ignoring or downplaying all other factors in the formation of our beliefs and attitudes; despite significant evidence that your model does not adequately take into account the complexity of influences in play.

As I mentioned earlier often the beliefs in certain norms like CP or Trad family setup comes from a rational place. So the belief in these things is not abusive.

I'll just pause to note that one can be both rational and abusive.

It doesn't itself cross the line into abusive attitudes of beliefs.

I'll accept that one can believe in corporal punishment or a "trad" family setup without holding abusive attitudes and beliefs, but also note that in fact, these beliefs are often fellow-travellers with abusive attitudes and beliefs, and that they provide justification and normalisation of them.

That is they distort rational beliefs into irrational ones due to their distorted psychological state. Thats the only difference.

No, sorry. The difference between an abuser and a non-abuser is not a distorted psychological state, or that their beliefs are irrational. It's simply that they hold the cluster of beliefs which underpins abuse.

So if the situation of abuse is bringing dysfunction and negativity onto the child and into the house perhaps effecting other kids do you think the parent introduced that. Do you think the parents must have had within her that same dysfunction and negativity within her. What was the state of mind of the parent to think and believe that the dysfunction and negativity they inflict is not actually dysfunctional and negative.

I don't think you can make generalisations like that. Every person is different.

No it cannot be in some cases because logically an unreal belief can only come from cognitive errors or distortion or unreal thinking.

But you are the one deciding that these are "unreal" beliefs and thinking. You are arguing, from your subjective value system, that someone else's subjective value system is wrong. But that's nothing more than your opinion.

Yes its saying that lessening the severity of stress is associated with having more positive parenting attitudes (i.e., more appropriate parenting expectations, greater empathy, and valuing non-physical punishment),

No no no. Observing two different people, and noting that they have differing stress levels, and differing parenting attitudes, is not the same as bringing about a change in someone's stress level, and demonstrating that their parenting attitudes changed accordingly.

So your now disagreeing with fundemental psychology that how we percieve the world through experiences positive or negative influences our beliefs.

Not at all what I said.

How is it irrelevant. I said that its the persons psychological state and experiences positive or negative which forms beliefs and attitudes. You said "This sentence doesn't even hold up to basic scrutiny, because it rests on subjective judgements about "positive" and "negative" experiences and beliefs".

So I refuted that by saying we can test whether experiences and thinking are positive or negative by science and first hand testimony which qualifies it from the subjective into the objective.

But science cannot make that value judgement for you. Science can tell you that something happened. The judgement that that happening is "positive" or "negative" has nothing to do with science.

When has that ever stopped feminist and other ideologues who denegrate males especially white males.

What the heck does this have to do with: a) the topic, b) what I said, c) reality?

If it does provoke some reaction then your link and the Feminist and activists trying to equalise women are all promoting abuse and violence by pushing such a controntation.

We all know, for example, that the most dangerous time for an abused woman is when she leaves her abuser. That doesn't mean that encouraging and supporting a woman to leave is "promoting abuse and violence." What a disgusting claim.

How about actually holding the perpetrators accountable for a change, rather than blaming everyone else?

I said that women suffer economically which increases stress and makes it harder for them to be independent.

But the point about women's economic disadvantage isn't about stress. It's about giving them the means to be independent of their abusers.

No thats a misreading. They were only talking about psychiatric conditions and not all other risk factors.

The point was, they took a cohort generally considered to have higher "risk factors," and found more abuse in the general population. Which just goes to show how shaky some of these claims about "risk factors" are.

The simple fact is they said that by treating parents who were psychiatric patients on release they were of no risk due to that treatment.

No. At no point did they say there were at no risk. They said their diagnosis did not increase their risk over what it would otherwise be.

The point was the psssychiatric condition itself was the risk factor that could lead to further complications and that treating that condition and not the belief or just the belief is what was reducing the risk and preventing potential abuse.

Actually, the point was that the idea that psychiatric conditions needed to be considered a risk factor was being debunked.

Yes it does.

No. No, it really doesn't. Again we come back to the very basic difference between correlation and causation...

They don't just go out trying to convince people and society to change their mind and beliefs. They speak of structural change, equalizing genders and parents and families to be more equal, to have more options, supports to cope because inequality is what disempowers and causes problems for people that mount up.

We need structural change because changing cultural norms means changing the way our culture and society function in order to no longer express those norms. Not because inequality causes the problems that cause the distress that drive abuse, but because inequality expresses the beliefs that normalise abuse.

No directly reduced abuse.

The review found that changes in income alone, holding all other factors constant, have a major impact on the numbers of children being harmed. Reductions in income and other economic shocks increase the numbers of children being subject to neglect and abuse, while improvements in income reduce those figures.
New evidence on the relationship between poverty and child abuse and neglect - Nuffield Foundation

When you click through to the full report, they base their measure on children in out of home care. But that is not a direct measure of abuse. It is a measure of response to reports of abuse (conflated with neglect).

Major reviews of children’s social care in England and Scotland have affirmed that family poverty and inequality are key drivers of harm to children. Changes in the economic conditions of family life alone – without any other factors – impact on rates of abuse and neglect. Increases in income reduced rates significantly. This is substantial new evidence for a contributory causal relationship between the economic circumstances of families and CAN.
https://research.hud.ac.uk/media/as...BetweenPovertyChildAbuseandNeglect_Report.pdf

That's the same full report I just mentioned.

There is a strong association between families’ socio-economic circumstances and the chances that their children will experience child abuse and neglect. This association exists across developed countries, types of abuse, definitions, measures and research approaches to both poverty and child abuse and neglect. This finding mirrors evidence about inequities in child health and educational outcomes. The greater the economic hardship the greater the likelihood and severity of child abuse and neglect.

Child Protection Plan rates in neighbourhoods among the most deprived 10 per cent in England as a whole were almost 11 times higher than rates in the most advantaged 10 per cent (decile) of neighbourhoods. That is to say, at a population level each incremental increase in family socio-economic disadvantage correlates with an increased chance of child abuse and neglect.
https://www.fatherhood.gov/sites/default/files/resource_files/e000003584.pdf

Again, that's measuring the response to reports, by looking at protection plans.

Preventing child maltreatment: a guide to taking action and generating evidence
Numerous studies show that child maltreatment is more frequent among poorer communities and households in societies with high economic inequalities. Measures to reduce poverty and economic inequalities ought thus to have significant effects in reducing child maltreatment.
Preventing child maltreatment: a guide to taking action and generating evidence

They state this without providing any evidence, and I have given you other sources from the UN which challenge the claim, saying that abuse is better hidden and under reported amongst the relatively wealthy.

That resource does have some helpful things to say about the "belief in the effectiveness and social acceptability of harsh physical punishment," though. And they note: "Strategies at the individual level to prevent child maltreatment are designed to change an individual’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviours directly."

Barnardos submission to the Inquiry into the extent and nature of poverty in Australia is focused on children. Specifically, the impact of the extent and nature of poverty as a direct causal factor of child abuse and neglect.

By narrowly focusing on parental behaviours, without recognition of the ongoing impact of poverty and violence, child protection workers make decisions that often lead to removal of children into OOHC, while the family’s material deprivation and experiences of family violence are rendered invisible and consequently not addressed (Benneth et al., 2020).
https://www.barnardos.org.au/wp-con...to-the-extent-and-nature-of-poverty-FINAL.pdf

When you read that whole section, their argument is more or less what I've been saying; abusive families in poverty come to the attention of authorities and receive intervention, where more wealthy abusive households escape such scrutiny. (And again, they're not differentiating neglect from other forms of abuse).

But evenso isn't reducing abuse reports a positive effect anyway.

Not necessarily. Not if it means the abuse is just going unreported.

I'm not against financial support, and I think what we provide is often ridiculously insufficient. But just don't kid yourself that if we got the welfare state right, that would deal with abuse.

 

[stevevw]

It's not necessarily about "needs." People believe what their society tells them to believe, they accept the norms of their culture, without it being about "needs."

But The norms are not saying that abusing kids is good. They say we should dicipline our kids but not give them black eyes and split lips as part of disciplining or bring up a well balanced child. In fact our norms say quite the opposite even extremely so to the point of cotton wooling kids.

Science cannot make a value judgement of that nature.

Of course it can. The OP uses that science to tell us that abusive CP has negative effects on a childs wellbeing and health. WE can measure the psychological harm done and how that negatively effects a persons ability to live as a happy and well balanced individual. Or how a broken bone or ruptured spleen can inpair a human physically.

No. Not uniformly "negative" in response.

Do you mean in intensity or degree of negative effects or consequences or that some don't experience any negative effects from the same situation.

Because neither negate the fact that abuse has negative effects by its nature of inflicting harm psychologically or physically on the abuser, victims and environments. They are outliers or just degrees of negative effect but still all negative to varying degrees. Its only the presense of Protective factors that will minmize the negative effects. Such as the individual has more coping ability due to positive influences in their life.

An anecdote; my mother (the same one I've been discussing as abusive in various ways) commented to me not that long ago; "I have two children. One is a priest, and one is in prison. Was there no middle ground?"

Now, you could argue that what we experienced growing up pushed us to the extremes in our responses. But we have not both made negative choices in response. (Unless you want to think becoming clergy is negative, but I'd argue against that view).

I am not sure any of this negates the negative effects of abuse. That one of the children managed to overcome that negative situation does not negative its negative effects on all. There are many factors such as temperament, personality, parent child dyad as in children develop different relation dynamics with their parents, the individual experiences beyond the home and genetics ect.

These all go in the mix as to why some individuals may handle the same situation differently. For example an general difference is that males are more prone to aggression hormonally as they have more testosterone. That on its own is not a single factor but it can make males more prone to risk taking and violence which when added to negative personal experiences can add up to trouble.

Hense we see a big disproportion of males to females in prison, homeless, assaulting, DV, crime, ect and usually they have dysfunctional childhoods. But others may not go down that path but there is usually some Protective factor involved that enables them to have some insight, or even some experience that causes them to vere away from that path. Maybe a friend died going down that path ect. So its a complex mix.

If you feel I'm misrepresenting your position, then I'd have to reply that you have not been very clear or consistent in presenting it.

I disagree. I know I can over complicate things and am not too good at grammar but most of what I have said is repeated word for word in the articles I have linked including your articles. You seem to be misrepresenting clear and basic facts by a variety of misrepresentations like strawmanning. non seqitors and false analogies.

For a good part of this thread, you were pushing back against my arguments about beliefs and attitudes in order to argue that it was all about other "risk factors."

Because it is. And I was not pushing back against belief itself. I have said many times that belief is part of the mix. I was pushing back against your insistence that it was only about belief. You did this by dismissing every explanation I gave about how the risk factors actually contribute. Which is another way of saying "no thats all irelevant because its all about beliefs".

No; there are influences on our beliefs other than "negative" experiences.

Of course, there are positive experiences. Understanding that experiences are what make your insides up of, how you percieve the world. As each experience is different between people there will be varying perceptions. But generally we can say there are positive and negative experiences on a number of levels, individually, family/relations and societal wide.

It is these that make up the inner person and will determine their attitudes and beliefs and behaviour. So for some the same experience in society may be negative due to individual and family factors. I think it always stems back to family, the parent child attachment bond as to whether its secure, insecure or ambivalent. That is what influences the adult as to psychological and emotions problems in relationships and more generally.

That is why many say abuse and violence is a sort of defence mechanism or compensatory drive against insecurity or ambivalence .

First, we have to get people to acknowledge that it's beliefs and attitudes, and not all the other so-called "risk factors," which drive behaviour. When that is accepted, then we can do the work on changing those beliefs and attitudes.

By the time that happens in the meantime we have a lot of abuse and violence going on especially where the risk factors are most apparent.

But to make people aware that they hold inappropriate beliefs and attitudes means first knowing what are the appropriate beliefs and attitudes and then using facts to dispell the inappropriate beliefs and attitudes that the person can not argue against. That shows that they hold irrational beliefs. That shows that something primed them for that and addressing this is what will actually change them, their attitudes and beliefs into positive ones.

That is why even your link when tiy actually looked at how primary prevention works awareness was only part of it. It was the restructuring of conditions where people were given autonomy and equality by changing conditions, financially, through education, supporting struggling families ect.

We have standards, in law, for determining when someone is not morally culpable for their behaviour.

Actually even when they are not capable of making a choice we still say they are responsible in that we make restrictions or put in place measures to prevent them repeating (safeguards).

But this doesn't mean that peoples choices are not compromised by their experiences. An alcoholic that kills a child while drink driving may have no controll over their drinking but we still prosecute them for their behaviour. Its usually a wakeup call for the person, a rock bottom where they finally stop denying and admit defeat. Even if that admiitence is that they cannot manage things on their own.

Your conflating not being morally accountable with not being cognitivelye capable. People can be cognitively in error and still be morally accountable.

I'm not claiming that they're making fully informed choices. I'm just pointing out that they are making choices; choices for which we can hold them responsible, and choices driven by attitudes and beliefs which we can challenge.

But to say that their choice was appropriate under the circumstances when theyr perception of appropriate un distorted is still making a choice based on something unreal. If they truely believe this then this says more about the state of their mind and not a wrong choice based on reality.

It doesn't excuse them because they could have done something along the way before it got to that point. But as with situations that end up being negative and destructive they inevitable come to a head where the person wakes up to themselves.

They get real and its the getting real that changes thei9r beliefs and behaviour and not trying to be a better person simply by cconditioning their mind and beliefs to a new kind of mind and belief. Its the change from within not from without.

I have not once seen you acknowledge this as a significant factor in belief formation. You have, instead, put forward a model where "negative" experiences drive distress, which leads to cognitive and affective distortion and abuse; while ignoring or downplaying all other factors in the formation of our beliefs and attitudes; despite significant evidence that your model does not adequately take into account the complexity of influences in play.

Its not my model but that of all child support organisations and professional not just with child abuse but all human behaviour positive or negative.

Yes I have emphasised the drivers of belief rather than belief itself because I think this is at the root of the issue just as your own link says. But I have qualified that belief is an important part of that many times throughout this thread generally by saying why people abuse is a complex combination of many factors which doesn't place more importance on any specific factor including belief but does includ belief.

I have also specifically referred to belief. For example This is a common statement I made "We want to be clear about what constitutes abuse, what thinking, beliefs and attitudes leads to abuse well before the consequences". So many referneces to the process that included beliefs in passing. Which you probably oiverlook as counting because you want me to make a big deal about beliefs.

I looked up the number of times I mentioned belief and 11 pages of replies came back. The very fact that I am mentioning belief so much as to what drives beliefs, why people believe, which is the right belief and attitudes shows that I regard belief as an important part of the complex issue.

I'll just pause to note that one can be both rational and abusive.

You keep repeating that but I have refuted this a long while back. Even your own arguements and logic supports this. The fact that even your own links and mine say that the abuser has "unreal expectations". Or what they call 'cognitive errors or distortions' shows their thinking is irrational.

I also refuted your fallacy that subjective rationality is the same as rational thinking based on facts, the science behind the harm done by that irrational thinking which exposes the abusers thinking and belief as unreal because they cannot use their subjective rationalisations to dispute the facts that show they are in error in their thinking against those facts.

I'll accept that one can believe in corporal punishment or a "trad" family setup without holding abusive attitudes and beliefs, but also note that in fact, these beliefs are often fellow-travellers with abusive attitudes and beliefs, and that they provide justification and normalisation of them.

That would make life itself a fellow traveller with abusive attitudes because just about all beliefs are based on a natural behaviours for humans. The destinguishing factor is that some turn these natural perceptions and behaviours to be abusive for their own reasons that deviate from the natural behaviours. Usually its a skewing of the natural instincts and behaviours.

Fundementally its about Fight and Flight instinct. But this can become distorted through experience where some percieve danger and threat where there is non and react accordingly against those unreal threats. Usually anxiety and depression are involved.

No, sorry. The difference between an abuser and a non-abuser is not a distorted psychological state, or that their beliefs are irrational. It's simply that they hold the cluster of beliefs which underpins abuse.

The point is why do they hold those beliefs. As I have already established that these beliefs and behaviours are negative factually by the measured damage and experiences. Its reagrded as unreal expectations or cognitive errors or distortions because the person is believing in something unreal that does not conform to reality.

ie they believe that the abuse is good for wellbeing while the wellbeing of all is harmed. They need a reality check because the exact opposite is happening to what they claim is happening according to their belief.

I don't think you can make generalisations like that. Every person is different.

Lets see what I actually said. First "do you think the parent introduced that". Surely this is self evident. Second "Do you think the parents must have had within her that same dysfunction and negativity within her". For a person to dish out such harm and negativity would point to the abuser themselves at least relating to such things in varying degrees. Its just being human. We are how we believe and behave.

Third "What was the state of mind of the parent to think and believe that the dysfunction and negativity they inflict is not actually dysfunctional and negative".

I think its safe to say that despite the abuser believing that their abuse is not actually abuse but even good for wellbeing points to a certain state of mind that is unreal. There may be degrees of negativity and unrealness but its still a destinct mindset that is not realistic or positive towards child wellbeing.

But you are the one deciding that these are "unreal" beliefs and thinking. You are arguing, from your subjective value system, that someone else's subjective value system is wrong. But that's nothing more than your opinion.

No I'm not but the very definition of what cognitive errors or distortions are. They don't conform with objective reality, the real world. Thats the science, the facts and not anything subjective. There are diagnostic measures of what is unreal and realistic thinking and beliefs.

I mean was say that abusers have unrealistic expectations of their children which is the same thing as saying they have unreal thinking and beliefs based on what is regarded as inappropriate due to the psychological and physical harm it does factually.

 

[Paidiske]

But The norms are not saying that abusing kids is good.

It's not that straightforward. We do have social norms which legitimise violence. We do have social norms which value hierarchy, power and control. We do have social norms which value rigid household roles. We might not hand people a package of norms saying "abuse is good," but especially in some sub-cultures, we certainly provide them with all the ingredients.

Of course it can.

No, it cannot. Science cannot make value judgements.

The OP uses that science to tell us that abusive CP has negative effects on a childs wellbeing and health.

More accurately, the OP uses science to say that any corporal punishment risks a child's mental health. But science cannot tell us that something is "negative." That is a value judgement we place on it.

Do you mean in intensity or degree of negative effects or consequences or that some don't experience any negative effects from the same situation.

I mean that some people who have "negative" experiences don't then go on to form beliefs and attitudes which perpetuate "negative" behaviours. The relationship between our experiences, our beliefs and attitudes, and our behaviours, is far more complex than that.

I know I can over complicate things and am not too good at grammar but most of what I have said is repeated word for word in the articles I have linked including your articles.

My point is more that some of your more recent posts seem to flatly contradict your arguments in earlier posts.

Because it is. And I was not pushing back against belief itself. I have said many times that belief is part of the mix. I was pushing back against your insistence that it was only about belief. You did this by dismissing every explanation I gave about how the risk factors actually contribute. Which is another way of saying "no thats all irelevant because its all about beliefs".

But in more recent posts you have shifted your argument to say that it is about belief, and that all the other factors are the things which shape our beliefs. So which is your position?

By the time that happens in the meantime we have a lot of abuse and violence going on especially where the risk factors are most apparent.

I have never argued that we should not respond to existing abuse. I have simply said that there is another urgent task of preventing abuse, and that that is about preventing people from forming the beliefs and attitudes which underpin abuse.

But to make people aware that they hold inappropriate beliefs and attitudes means first knowing what are the appropriate beliefs and attitudes and then using facts to dispell the inappropriate beliefs and attitudes that the person can not argue against.

Well, we know what the beliefs and attitudes are which underpin abuse. So we can challenge those.

That shows that they hold irrational beliefs.

Again, not necessarily. That's a flawed premise which cripples the rest of your argument.

Actually even when they are not capable of making a choice we still say they are responsible in that we make restrictions or put in place measures to prevent them repeating (safeguards).

Sure, we put some people in psychiatric institutions. But we recognise that there is a difference between someone who made choices, and is responsible for them, and someone who was not capable of making choices.

Your conflating not being morally accountable with not being cognitivelye capable.

Truly not being cognitively capable would render someone morally not culpable.

People can be cognitively in error and still be morally accountable.

In error? Yes. But whether or not someone is "in error" is simply not the issue.

They get real and its the getting real that changes thei9r beliefs and behaviour and not trying to be a better person simply by cconditioning their mind and beliefs to a new kind of mind and belief.

What is the difference between "getting real" and taking on new beliefs, when the changed beliefs lead to less abuse?

Its not my model but that of all child support organisations and professional not just with child abuse but all human behaviour positive or negative.

Except the counter-examples I've given you, just to start with.

Yes I have emphasised the drivers of belief rather than belief itself because I think this is at the root of the issue just as your own link says.

My point is that you take a very limited view on what the drivers of belief are. You reduce them to "negative" or "positive" experiences and resulting psychological states, rather than taking a comprehensive view of all the many influences, including cultural and social.

You keep repeating that but I have refuted this a long while back.

Not with anything credible.

That would make life itself a fellow traveller with abusive attitudes because just about all beliefs are based on a natural behaviours for humans.

One could argue that abuse is, to some extent, "natural." That doesn't mean it's desirable, or that we shouldn't aim to eradicate it.

The point is why do they hold those beliefs.

And for each person it will be a slightly different mix of experiences, messages, observations, social influences, and so on. What it is not, is a simple result of "negative" experiences and psychological effects. If that were true, challenges to social norms would be ineffective, but we've seen that they're very effective.

No I'm not but the very definition of what cognitive errors or distortions are.

It's not necessarily a cognitive error to value hierarchy. Or rigid roles. Or even to accept a degree of violence. It's just different values.

There are diagnostic measures of what is unreal and realistic thinking and beliefs.

And they don't measure the beliefs and attitudes which underpin abuse.

 

[stevevw]

No no no. Observing two different people, and noting that they have differing stress levels, and differing parenting attitudes, is not the same as bringing about a change in someone's stress level, and demonstrating that their parenting attitudes changed accordingly.

So what is the research pointing out between the link of stress and inappropriate parenting attitudes. That stress factors contribute to inappropriate attitudes and low stress with positive parenting attitudes.

Not at all what I said.

I don't know what you meant then. What did you mean when you disagreed when I said "Its got to be something that changes their inner self to change belief". You said I have to "come up with something more substantial than simple assertion".

I then explained the commonsense and well founded primnciple in psychology that "how we percieve the world through experiences positive or negative influences our beliefs". How is that not disagreeing with basic human thinking and behaviour.

But science cannot make that value judgement for you. Science can tell you that something happened. The judgement that that happening is "positive" or "negative" has nothing to do with science.

Yes it does. Science tells us optiminum physical and mental health states and normal development just to exist as a human. Just like we need certain nuitritions to maintain a healthy mind and body for living and surviving. Survival is a natural inbuilt instinct. Theres nothing subjective about getting out of the way of a car heading your way. Its fight or flight.

What the heck does this have to do with: a) the topic, b) what I said, c) reality?

Its got everything to do with this issue. You said the restructuring to make things equal may bring stress to males in adjusting to losing their status. But what if the restructuring actually denied their equality and has negative and stressful effects that actually increased conflict between genders.

Thats doing the opposite of reducing relational conflicts and inequality and actually feeding negative attitudes.

We all know, for example, that the most dangerous time for an abused woman is when she leaves her abuser. That doesn't mean that encouraging and supporting a woman to leave is "promoting abuse and violence." What a disgusting claim.

How on earth did you derive that from what I said. Thats coming from you, how you feel not me. You completely missed the point. As mentioned above if a particular policy or ideological belief about how we should order society to be equal can actually be more destructive than making things equal.

As I said earlier beliefs are subjective and what is regarded as the right belief and attitude right down to how we interact in real life situations is based subject to those ideological assumptions and beliefs about humans and society should be ordered. It all depends on which ideology is best for creating an equal and abuse and violent free society.

For example as I said your article mentions quotas and affirmative actions. That means society dems certain groups as more worthy of special attention and benefits over others because of their sjin colour or gender. That actually creates inequality and conflict between groups and leads to abuse and violence.

How about actually holding the perpetrators accountable for a change, rather than blaming everyone else?

Who said anything about not holding the perpetrators accountable. I said earlier that none of what I am saying excuses abuse but rathe rhelps us understand abuse.

The law is both punitive and rehanbilitative. If we want to change attitudes and behaviour and prevent abuse and violence then it should be about rehabilitative approaches as well that actually address the rooy causes for why people behave badly or inappropriatly.

But the point about women's economic disadvantage isn't about stress. It's about giving them the means to be independent of their abusers.

Stress is a big part of it. Its like you want to detach human feelings and experiences from who people are. You did this with trying to claim that negative feelings don't mean anything regarding abuse like humans are robots immune to feelings.

One of the biggest factors of poverty, and low socioeconomic status is the added stress of having little power to avoid the problems that come with poverty like not having money to pay the energy bull or rent which then makes people anxious about their housing which is one of the biggest issues people stress about.

Its the dependence that causes the stress because your subject to other forces beyond yourself and theres not much you can do about it.

The point was, they took a cohort generally considered to have higher "risk factors," and found more abuse in the general population. Which just goes to show how shaky some of these claims about "risk factors" are.

Your good at misrepesenting things. Why did the cohort have less abuse than the general population. Because they were treated into being non abusers. So of course. But nothing in that study mentions the other risk factors that parents were experiencing like family conflict, past abuse, poverty, trauma, everyday emotional and psychological problems that also contribute. They did not factor these out.

They were only looking at psychiatric patients who had been treated and untreated in the community. Like I said we know that low socio economic status increases the risk of abuse. Where in your article does it mention this, or past abuse or other stressors.

No. At no point did they say there were at no risk. They said their diagnosis did not increase their risk over what it would otherwise be.

What does "what it would otherwise be: mean. Is this comparing treated and untreated so otheriwse would mean untreated. Or are you saying that they were at no risk if untreated.

Actually, the point was that the idea that psychiatric conditions needed to be considered a risk factor was being debunked.

Yes and as I said this is also debunked by the majoirty of evidence so your link is either wrong or your misreading it. I gave you a number of links showing that mental illness is regarded as a risk factor for abuse.

No. No, it really doesn't. Again we come back to the very basic difference between correlation and causation...

As I keep saying there is no single causation of abuse. You keep ,aking this misrepresentation alluding to their being a single cause and therefore dismissing all risks because they are not causes. We can do the same with beliefs. Beliefs are caused by other determinants as your links says so belief is not the cause either. Rather its a combination of factors (determinants) that cause abuse and each needs to be address.

We need structural change because changing cultural norms means changing the way our culture and society function in order to no longer express those norms.

Exactly. Its not the beliefs but the structural conditions underneath that cause the beliefs. Its the idea that society can exist with certain groups suffering and unequal and others have more power.

Not because inequality causes the problems that cause the distress that drive abuse, but because inequality expresses the beliefs that normalise abuse.

Its exactlt because inequality causes the problems. If it didn't there would be no problem. Its the idea that some people can have more position, power and control due to their unequal position which is above and not equal that cultivates the idea that some people can be treated unfairly and abusively whether thats of their rights to life, their autonomy, their opportunities or their even make mistakes. Its the idea that individualism is the ultimate measure of success.

That good is measured in what you have and are able to get for yourself and not by just the fact that you are human regardless of your ability or what you have. In some ways the Capitalism, Neo liberalism and Individualism are the rooyt causes as they promote a class sociiety.

When you click through to the full report, they base their measure on children in out of home care. But that is not a direct measure of abuse. It is a measure of response to reports of abuse (conflated with neglect).

Yes and because they ended up in out of home care it was deemed they were subject to maltreatment. If you look at the detail it clearly states they are talking about physical abuse where they seperate them by harm, abuse (physical abuse) and seperate neglect as a destinct category besides PA.

“The international evidence about the relationship between poverty and child abuse and neglect is much stronger now than it was five years ago. From this research, we can be certain that increased pressures on family life will lead to the risk that more children will be subject to harm, abuse and neglect,

That's the same full report I just mentioned.

Sorry yep didn't see that. But heres more evidence that they are not just talking about neglect as in just not affording enough food but about the stress and other risk factors that go with low socioeconomic status which are more linked to a parents state of mind, their compromised ability to cope with the stressors that lead to PA.

Child protection systems and services are too rarely engaging effectively with the impact of income, employment and housing conditions on families and children. Nor do policies, systems and practice adequately recognise how economic conditions are inextricably connected to factors more often highlighted: mental health, domestic violence and abuse and addictions.

Again, that's measuring the response to reports, by looking at protection plans.

Ah the fact a protection plan is in place means that actual abuse has takem place. Its states 'subject to protection plans' and not reports. Protection plans only come in after abuse has been verified.

Besides if you carefully read what they are saying they are actually making the claim that for each incremental increase in family socio-economic disadvantage there will be an increased risk in abuse.

They even say that as the disadvantage increases in severity this will increase the severity of abuse. So it logically follows that each decrease in disadvantage will help decrease abuse directly as they state.

They state this without providing any evidence,

That is why I linked several articles saying the same thing. Good science is when its a repeated fiunding by indpendent sources. But it is from the World Health Organisation so I would expect that they would do their research being such an authority.

and I have given you other sources from the UN which challenge the claim, saying that abuse is better hidden and under reported amongst the relatively wealthy.

Isn't that ironic. WHO is associated with the UN so if an article from the UN is credible then one from WHO is also.

Thats a seperate issue, that wealth can hide abuse. But the issue that abuse is more seen in disadvantaged groups is a seperate fact. Don't conflate two different issues or use one to cancel the other out. Ifr there was ever an organisation that would know what influences child abuse its going to be WHO as that is their entire ethos human health and wellbeing especially children.

I think UNICEF is another arm of the UN. As well as the Conventions on Child HUman Rights. So they need to be knowing what they are talking about and they would know the effects of poverty throughout the world especially on children.

That resource does have some helpful things to say about the "belief in the effectiveness and social acceptability of harsh physical punishment," though. And they note: "Strategies at the individual level to prevent child maltreatment are designed to change an individual’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviours directly."

Yes I agree strategies at the individual level and not the community level. That means working on the individual factors that are causing the negative and innappropriate attitudes and beliefs such as education or their financial situation or their psychological distress.

When you read that whole section, their argument is more or less what I've been saying; abusive families in poverty come to the attention of authorities and receive intervention, where more wealthy abusive households escape such scrutiny. (And again, they're not differentiating neglect from other forms of abuse).

I guess thats because of the fact that wealthy people are in more of a position to hide things not just abuse. It would make peoples hair curl if it was revealed what some of the elites get up to and not just regarding child abuse.

But this doesn't change the fact that the majority of abuse happens in disadvantaged groups. It just means we need to be aware of another factor or risk where abuse can be hidden in wealthier cohorts. So the meaage between each group would be targeted and different.

Not necessarily. Not if it means the abuse is just going unreported.

You don't have to make an either/or option. You can have both you know. You can reduce abuse by addressing the individual and family or local community risk factors while also addressing the more general societal factors at the same time. In fact this is the best way as its comprehensive, self supporting and mutually beneficial.

I'm not against financial support, and I think what we provide is often ridiculously insufficient. But just don't kid yourself that if we got the welfare state right, that would deal with abuse.

Of course not. Abuse and violence are a multifaceted and multilevel issue. Poverty alone is not the cause but rather then combing and building of additional risk factors that often go witrh poverty like stress, poor mental health, substance abuse and family conflict.

But there is the individual, family and societal wide levels and determinants as well that all need to be considered. ITs a combination of these factors and not any single factor that causes abuse.

 

[stevevw]

It's not that straightforward. We do have social norms which legitimise violence. We do have social norms which value hierarchy, power and control. We do have social norms which value rigid household roles. We might not hand people a package of norms saying "abuse is good," but especially in some sub-cultures, we certainly provide them with all the ingredients.

But according to you this is all subjective. If thats the case we could be subjective promoting norms we think are good right now that are designed to stop abuse which actually cause abuse. We don't know because its all subjective according to you.

No, it cannot. Science cannot make value judgements.

So when we say smoking causes disease and kills what sort of judgement are we making, a medical one based on science or a moral one.

More accurately, the OP uses science to say that any corporal punishment risks a child's mental health. But science cannot tell us that something is "negative." That is a value judgement we place on it.

Ok lets call it something else but whatever we call it its not conducive of good health and wellbeing as far as humans go. When we say negative it means it has a negative effect on the body and mind in that it deminishes or damages its functioning to live human potential which we consider is vital for human life based on how humans think and behave.

I mean that some people who have "negative" experiences don't then go on to form beliefs and attitudes which perpetuate "negative" behaviours. The relationship between our experiences, our beliefs and attitudes, and our behaviours, is far more complex than that.

Yes thats what I said. There will also be factors why that person did not go on to develop negative beliefs and abuse. Just like negative experiences prime negative beliefs and thinking positive experiences do the opposite. The person usually has some emotional intelligence to cope and have insight into themselves. But others don't.

My point is more that some of your more recent posts seem to flatly contradict your arguments in earlier posts.

You will have to give me an example as I am not sure what you mean.

But in more recent posts you have shifted your argument to say that it is about belief, and that all the other factors are the things which shape our beliefs. So which is your position?

Yes because I began with saying it was not just about belief but also the risk and protective factors and trying to explain and support this. But as you kept narrowingly focusing on beliefs and dismissing all that I thought I would change tact by explaining how belief itself is just a symptom of underlying factors. Your link explained that well through the determinants that drive beliefs and attitudes.

If you remember I said quite early that beliefs come from the same risk factors or determinants as those associated with abuse itself. That is when I began to focus more on the drivers of belief to try and explain further how belief is only part and more a symptom of underlying states of cognition that has been distorted by the same risk factors such as stress, anxiety, hardship, family conflict, disadvantage ect.

I have never argued that we should not respond to existing abuse. I have simply said that there is another urgent task of preventing abuse, and that that is about preventing people from forming the beliefs and attitudes which underpin abuse.

But you can't seperate this from the reasons why people commit the existing abuse. Its a individual, family and societal issue, a multi level issue with factors in each level that contribute and are tied to each other from the individual to the community wide. If you just look at abuse from only the community wide lens you miss a lot about why parents abuse.

Well, we know what the beliefs and attitudes are which underpin abuse. So we can challenge those.

Once again I thought you said the beliefs and attitudes held by abusers is rational and that its all subjective value judgements without any objective basis to say its the right or wrong attitudes.

But evenso how do we know you have determined the right beliefs and attitudes which are said to cultivate abuse. Like I said your own link said the right attitude re preventing abuse is to have quotas to evenup gender and minority inequality. But quotas actually cause inequality and abuse.

Again, not necessarily. That's a flawed premise which cripples the rest of your argument.

Lol ironically it actually cripples your arguement because your the one saying we cannot have any rational basis to say what is abuse or what is appropriate attitudes because its all a subjective value judgment. If we don't have some objective and rational basis then we have no basis to saying any abuse and belief about abuse is wrong.

Sure, we put some people in psychiatric institutions. But we recognise that there is a difference between someone who made choices, and is responsible for them, and someone who was not capable of making choices.

No the law does not destinguish that. It doesn't care either way. Its only concerned that a law has been broken. But it does take into consideration mitigating ccccircumstances like a person being abused or coming from a broken family, substance abuse or psychological problems and other setbacks and traumas in a persons life.

It allows reductions in sentences, education programs, counselling/therapy or rehab and even enforces this as part of the sentence in recognising that these factors contributed to the person ending up before the court.

Truly not being cognitively capable would render someone morally not culpable.

No because they could have adverted this along the way. Thats the nature of how problems evolved into bigger problems which become out of control or where the person loses touch with themselves or reality. Its Chaos theory. The more you let something go and don't face it or deal with it the more complicated it becomes and takes over you.

The person may at one stage misbehaved which was a sign that something was wrong and think I should get help or do something. But for various reaons possibly afraid to face reality push that problem deeper and deeper until it unconsciously begins to take over your thinking.

Its not that your completely ignorant but that your in denial. This means you do see from time to time the reality of the situation but due to your psychological and emotional state you cannot deal with it.

In error? Yes. But whether or not someone is "in error" is simply not the issue.

Of course it is. IN error is 'Cognitive error' or cognitive distortions. If a persons thinking is distorted then they are hardly basing their choices and behaviour on something clear headed and able to weight up the pros and cons of their choices.

Their choices are based on a distorted perception of things so of course they are going to risk making wrong choices based on inappropriate and unreal perceptions. THis is psychology 101.

What is the difference between "getting real" and taking on new beliefs, when the changed beliefs lead to less abuse?

The difference is you have to get real first to change your beliefs from negative to positive. You have to change on the inside to change beliefs.

Except the counter-examples I've given you, just to start with.

Like I said you have offered around 1/2 dozen links and most of them support what the other articles I linked said. I tend to go with the findings that are supported by a number of independent sources which my have. Even better they are supported by your sources. I haven't seen anything that refutes what I have said. You may think in your mind this is the case but I have not seen any independent evdience enough to refute what the majoority evidence shows.

My point is that you take a very limited view on what the drivers of belief are. You reduce them to "negative" or "positive" experiences and resulting psychological states, rather than taking a comprehensive view of all the many influences, including cultural and social.

I have repeatedly said that its a multi faceted complex issue with multi levels being individual, family and the wider societal issues factors but non are priviledged.

In fact if anything its the experience and its effects on individuals that is the primary root cause because at the end of the day regardless of what it is the experiences that cultivate belief. There will be no beliefs without experiences, experience determine positive or negative beliefs or how every you want to measure belief. The experiences of the entire community together is what determines their beliefs.

Not with anything credible.

Yes I did, with your own logic. You want the best of both world. You want to say that abusers of not irrational in their thinking while at the same time want to draw a clear line that their attitudes and beliefs are unreal and inappropriate that we should replace them with more appropriate and realistic ones or 'the right ones'.

You can't have both. If their thinking is rational then they are doing nothing wrong.

One could argue that abuse is, to some extent, "natural." That doesn't mean it's desirable, or that we shouldn't aim to eradicate it.

That implies we need to sort out what beliefs are desirable or not. What are appropriate or not.

And for each person it will be a slightly different mix of experiences, messages, observations, social influences, and so on. What it is not, is a simple result of "negative" experiences and psychological effects. If that were true, challenges to social norms would be ineffective, but we've seen that they're very effective.

Your making a category mistake or conflation I think. Your seperating challenges to social norms from the individual and family experiences.

BY the way it does come down to experiences and psychological effects positive opr negative because that is how human cognition, emotion and beliefs work regarding behaviours. This has been a fact for decades and backed by a number of well established theories.

It's not necessarily a cognitive error to value hierarchy. Or rigid roles.

No which shows that belief in these things itself is not the problem. Its the distorting of this thats the problem.

Or even to accept a degree of violence. It's just different values.

If its just different values then why is valuing abuse and violence a problem. If its just different values then how do we justify that some values and beliefs are the wrong ones to have.

How do we even tell which are the right or positive ones and which ones are not. How do we know we are not at this very moment promoting the wrong values and beliefs in society.

And they don't measure the beliefs and attitudes which underpin abuse.

Yes they do. I posted links explaining this. How anxiety can cause people to distort whats really happening, create unreal expectations and beliefs about the world which percieve threat and provoke inappropriate bejhaviour.

They may for example determine a person has personality disorder, or OCD, or severe anxiety disorder, or attention deficit disorder, They can even measure cognitive errors in thinking ie that thinking does not conform with whats really happening.

From this they can link the inappropriate thinking, beliefs and behaviours not just for abuse but for all social problems. Its called behavioural sciences and we are more advanaced in our knowledge as time goes by.

I mean we can even trace thinking, emotional regulation and beliefs back to the womb to a degree. Such as that a mothers stress levels can effect development where a persons disposition is more anxious and prone to cognitive errors, personality problems or a propensity for agressive and violent behaviour.

.Overall, the researchers found that women who reported more anxiety, depression or stress while pregnant were more likely to have children with more ADHD symptoms or who exhibited more difficulties with aggressive or hostile behavior, as reported by parents or teachers.

High levels of maternal stress during pregnancy linked to children's behavior problems

Children whose mothers are highly stressed, anxious or depressed during pregnancy may be at higher risk for mental health and behavior issues during their childhood and teen years, according to new research.

www.sciencedaily.com

 

[Paidiske]

So what is the research pointing out between the link of stress and inappropriate parenting attitudes. That stress factors contribute to inappropriate attitudes and low stress with positive parenting attitudes.

Simply that these things are more likely occur together. You cannot infer a causative relationship from that data.

I don't know what you meant then. What did you mean when you disagreed when I said "Its got to be something that changes their inner self to change belief". You said I have to "come up with something more substantial than simple assertion".

I then explained the commonsense and well founded primnciple in psychology that "how we percieve the world through experiences positive or negative influences our beliefs". How is that not disagreeing with basic human thinking and behaviour.

Sure, experiences influence our beliefs. But they don't determine them. One might respond to any particular experience in a variety of ways. And there are a whole lot of influences on our beliefs other than "positive" or "negative" experiences.

Yes it does.

No, it doesn't. This is a very basic and important principle; science does not make value judgements. It tells us what is, but it does not tell us how to value those things.

Its got everything to do with this issue. You said the restructuring to make things equal may bring stress to males in adjusting to losing their status. But what if the restructuring actually denied their equality and has negative and stressful effects that actually increased conflict between genders.

We are not speaking of ordinary conflict, when we speak of abuse. Abuse is about power and control; conflict can be something far healthier, and necessary.

How on earth did you derive that from what I said.

You accused feminists and activists of "promoting abuse and violence" by confronting injustice and inequality. I pointed out that while confronting those situations might provoke an abusive reaction, it's not "promoting abuse and violence" to do so.

Who said anything about not holding the perpetrators accountable.

Accusing the people who confront injustice of "promoting abuse and violence" blames them rather than the people who actually commit abuse and violence.

Stress is a big part of it.

No, because with women we are discussing them as the victims of abuse. They are not more prone to being abused because they are stressed. They are more prone to being abused because they are relatively powerless. Empower them economically, and they are able to avoid or leave abusive situations.

Your good at misrepesenting things.

I'll thank you not to make accusations. We disagree; that doesn't mean I am being dishonest.

Why did the cohort have less abuse than the general population. Because they were treated into being non abusers.

Because their mental illness was not the risk factor it is often considered to be.

So of course. But nothing in that study mentions the other risk factors that parents were experiencing like family conflict, past abuse, poverty, trauma, everyday emotional and psychological problems that also contribute. They did not factor these out.

Of course they didn't. Because they were trying to look at whether mental illness was a risk factor, and they needed a cohort which experienced all of the same other challenges besides the mental illness in order to be a meaningful control group.

They were only looking at psychiatric patients who had been treated and untreated in the community.

No. In the community, they were specifically looking at people who were not psychiatric patients.

What does "what it would otherwise be: mean. Is this comparing treated and untreated so otheriwse would mean untreated. Or are you saying that they were at no risk if untreated.

I am saying there would, of course, be some risk even if they had no psychiatric diagnosis. That their diagnosis did not increase their risk, but that their treatment did not reduce it to zero.

Yes and as I said this is also debunked by the majoirty of evidence so your link is either wrong or your misreading it.

Or it calls into question what other studies have found.

I gave you a number of links showing that mental illness is regarded as a risk factor for abuse.

"Is regarded as" is not the same as "is." Other sources call this into question.

As I keep saying there is no single causation of abuse. You keep ,aking this misrepresentation alluding to their being a single cause and therefore dismissing all risks because they are not causes.

No, I'm saying that if these things are causative, even cumulatively, then we ought to be able to measure their causative contribution. Noting that two things occur together does not demonstrate that one causes the other.

Exactly. Its not the beliefs but the structural conditions underneath that cause the beliefs. Its the idea that society can exist with certain groups suffering and unequal and others have more power.

That's part of it, but not in the way you've been trying to argue. It's not about suffering causing distress, causing cognitive impairment, causing "unreal thinking," causing abuse. It's about cultural norms justifying abusers' actions in their own minds.

Yes and because they ended up in out of home care it was deemed they were subject to maltreatment.

My point is, this is all dependent on reports.

Ah the fact a protection plan is in place means that actual abuse has takem place.

Yes, but again, it's dependent on reporting. A change in the number of protection plans can simply indicate a change in reporting levels, rather than a change in levels of underlying abuse.

Isn't that ironic. WHO is associated with the UN so if an article from the UN is credible then one from WHO is also.

My point is, that later publications from the UN cast these claims into doubt.

Thats a seperate issue, that wealth can hide abuse.

No, it's not. Because if wealth can hide abuse, then claims that there is more abuse in households in poverty can simply reflect that those households are less able to hide the abuse.

Yes I agree strategies at the individual level and not the community level.

The point is that at the individual level, it's changing beliefs and attitudes which is crucial.

You don't have to make an either/or option.

My point is that simply reducing reports is neither here nor there, if it's not addressing the underlying abuse. If we give abusive households in poverty financial support, and we find that abuse reports go down, have we stopped the abuse, or is it just better hidden now, as we know it's easier to hide abuse when financially comfortable?

But according to you this is all subjective. If thats the case we could be subjective promoting norms we think are good right now that are designed to stop abuse which actually cause abuse. We don't know because its all subjective according to you.

Well, it's subjective in the sense that the value judgements we make on it are just that; value judgements. But we can do the best we can, with the information we have, to discourage attitudes which we know underpin abuse, and encourage attitudes which lead to healthier ways of relating.

So when we say smoking causes disease and kills what sort of judgement are we making, a medical one based on science or a moral one.

Saying that smoking causes disease is a fact. The judgement that that disease is undesirable, and to be avoided, is a value statement.

Yes thats what I said.

Then perhaps it would be good to drop the insistence that there is a straightforward pathway from "negative" experiences to committing abuse.

You will have to give me an example as I am not sure what you mean.

Earlier, you were arguing that beliefs and attitudes were not so important, that it was other risk factors, that people "just snap" due to various external pressures. You seem now to have switched to agreeing that beliefs and attitudes determine our behaviours, and claiming that those beliefs and attitudes are formed by various risk factors and external pressures.

These models are not remotely similar. So which is it, in your view?

But you can't seperate this from the reasons why people commit the existing abuse.

But they are different tasks. Responding to existing abuse is a very different task than preventing the next generation from becoming abusers.

Once again I thought you said the beliefs and attitudes held by abusers is rational and that its all subjective value judgements without any objective basis to say its the right or wrong attitudes.

What I have said is that many abusers are rational, and that dealing with the attitudes which drive abuse as "irrational" is both inaccurate and unhelpful. It is all subjective; but we have a right, as a society, to make a subjective value judgement that we wish to reduce or eliminate abuse, and therefore to encourage the relevant changes in social norms, beliefs, and attitudes.

But evenso how do we know you have determined the right beliefs and attitudes which are said to cultivate abuse.

Research has found a consistent set of beliefs and attitudes shared by abusers, which they use to justify their abuse, and not shared by non-abusers. That's a pretty good start. I'm not saying we'll never nuance that understanding further, but meanwhile we can work on what we do have.

Lol ironically it actually cripples your arguement because your the one saying we cannot have any rational basis to say what is abuse or what is appropriate attitudes because its all a subjective value judgment.

The difference is that I have no problem owning something as a subjective value judgement, and yet being willing to act on it anyway.

If we don't have some objective and rational basis then we have no basis to saying any abuse and belief about abuse is wrong.

Sure we do. We make all sorts of subjective value judgements as a society and enshrine them in various laws, programmes, initiatives, and so on.

No the law does not destinguish that.

Of course it does. Someone's mental fitness to stand trial is a real principle.

No because they could have adverted this along the way.

Perhaps; certainly not in all instances.

Of course it is. IN error is 'Cognitive error' or cognitive distortions.

Not necessarily. A person can be in error without them being cognitively distorted. Perhaps they believe something because that's all they've ever known; because that's what they've been told since they were a child. Someone could - to take a trivial example - believe the Amazon is a river in Africa without there being any particular cognitive distortion on their part; it's just that someone once told them the wrong thing, and it stuck.

Cognitive error means more than just being wrong about something. It means the brain's functioning being so flawed that it is not able to respond appropriately to reality. But that's not necessarily what's going on when someone is abusive.

The difference is you have to get real first to change your beliefs from negative to positive. You have to change on the inside to change beliefs.

Again, I disagree. And part of the problem is the simplistic characterisation of "negative" and "positive," here.

I have repeatedly said that its a multi faceted complex issue with multi levels being individual, family and the wider societal issues factors but non are priviledged.

And then you keep coming back to "negative" experiences, distress, cognitive impairment, rather than acknowledging any of those other influences.

The experiences of the entire community together is what determines their beliefs.

This is beginning to be a much better view, because it acknowledges the role of community as mediator in belief formation.

You want to say that abusers of not irrational in their thinking while at the same time want to draw a clear line that their attitudes and beliefs are unreal and inappropriate that we should replace them with more appropriate and realistic ones or 'the right ones'.

Those are your words, not mine. It's their behaviours I find unacceptable. If changing the behaviours means challenging the beliefs, then yes, we should do that, but I'm not saying anything about those beliefs being "unreal."

If their thinking is rational then they are doing nothing wrong.

I'm sorry, I simply don't agree with this. To my mind, the question of rationality, and the question of ethics, are two completely unrelated questions. You can be completely rational and completely wrong. You can be completely irrational and yet still behave in ways that are doing the right thing.

That implies we need to sort out what beliefs are desirable or not. What are appropriate or not.

When it comes to abuse, yes, we do.

No which shows that belief in these things itself is not the problem.

Well, it can be part of the problem. It's just not a problem because of "cognitive error."

If its just different values then why is valuing abuse and violence a problem.

Because as a society we've decided abuse is bad. Just like we've decided murder is bad, and theft is bad, and rape is bad. They're all value judgements, but we can still make those judgements in a democracy.

How do we even tell which are the right or positive ones and which ones are not.

Well, we look at which ones underpin the problematic behaviour. What do abusers believe that non-abusers don't?

Yes they do.

No, they don't. We went through this. At best there's some overlap on some points. But the instruments leave out several factors which drive abuse, and measure other factors which don't drive abuse.

 

[stevevw]

Simply that these things are more likely occur together. You cannot infer a causative relationship from that data.

I'm not saying stress on its own causes abuse. The articles are saying stress is a contributory factor in abuse. Stress is usually either the result of other risks ie financial stress, or stress from not coping. But its present when abuse happens.

Sure, experiences influence our beliefs. But they don't determine them. One might respond to any particular experience in a variety of ways. And there are a whole lot of influences on our beliefs other than "positive" or "negative" experiences.

Such as. There can be no other influence on our beliefs but experience. Experience will create in the person the reasons why they believe.

No, it doesn't. This is a very basic and important principle; science does not make value judgements. It tells us what is, but it does not tell us how to value those things.

Then how do we determine that abusive CP is wrong as opposed to non abusive dicipline. Evolution is not a value judgement but a natural process in nature for survival, self preservation, adaptability, natural instincts that drive us to survive.

Part of that natural drive is living and functioning individually and as a society as healthy beings giving us a better chance to survive. That means damage or harm done is a natural threat to human survival. Thats not a value judgement but a natural instinct to survive. It influences our thinking and behaviour regardless of our values.

We are not speaking of ordinary conflict, when we speak of abuse. Abuse is about power and control; conflict can be something far healthier, and necessary.

That is very short sighted. Relational conflict has everything to do with abuse. Abuse is the extreme result of relational conflict. If measures to equalize society actually cause more inequality and results in conflict that is the very conflict that fuels violence and abuse because its making people unequal and oppressing them. Its actually doing the very opposite of what prevention approaches are suppose to do.

You accused feminists and activists of "promoting abuse and violence" by confronting injustice and inequality. I pointed out that while confronting those situations might provoke an abusive reaction, it's not "promoting abuse and violence" to do so.

Yes and I explained that the opposite can also happen if they get it wrong, if their as you say so called subjective opinions about how we should restructure society to equalize it and prevent abuse and violence are actually wrong, misguided and based on ideology rather than facts or reality.

I will give some examples to help. POlicies to increase womens equality may be having a negeative influence on reducing equality for males at the same time. Quotas that place a women ahead of a male for no other reason but gender is doing the very opposite of prevention programs. Its actually saying that a persons value is their gender and not the content of their character or merit. This creates resentment and conflict between genders

Another example is how the policy to equalize society by allowing transwomen into biological womens spaces. This has caused a lot of conflict between Feminist, Womens Rights groups and Trans activists and is winding back the hard fought for rights to equality and empowerment of women. This actually does the opposite of what preventative programs should be doing.

Accusing the people who confront injustice of "promoting abuse and violence" blames them rather than the people who actually commit abuse and violence.

Its a justified accusation if its true that the very ideology they base restructuring society on to be more equal is unfounded and actually causes conflicts between groups and cultivates negative beliefs and attitudes towards each other that prime for violence and abuse. Look at Riley Gains simplt standing up for women only to be threatened within an inch of her life. Look at how anti semetisism has resurfaced in todays society.

They are red flags that something is wrong with the very policies and prevention strategies, the ideology that is being used to make a more equal society. Its actually dividing society into groups pitted against each other.

No, because with women we are discussing them as the victims of abuse. They are not more prone to being abused because they are stressed. They are more prone to being abused because they are relatively powerless. Empower them economically, and they are able to avoid or leave abusive situations.

Its about both. Its about stress and lack of control as parents and its about gaining control and avoiding the stresses to avoid ending up in a situation where they can be further compromised to the point where they are psychologically effected and abuse.

I'll thank you not to make accusations. We disagree; that doesn't mean I am being dishonest.

Misrepresenting things is not necessarily being dishonest and I was not intending that. You can honestly misrepresent something because that is your lack of logical and critical thinking. I can go back if you want and give you clear examples if you want. But the most recent when you said

"The point was, they took a cohort generally considered to have higher "risk factors," and found more abuse in the general population. Which just goes to show how shaky some of these claims about "risk factors" are" is a misrepresentation of the articles findings.

Your ignored that the cohort that normally has high risk factors no longer was considered high risk. Your implying they are comparing a high risk group untreated with the general rate in the population and then making claims that this high risk group is no more risk than the general population.

Your also assuming that the general population has no risk themselves which will skew any findings the article makes because they are not comparing like with like. They have not factored these things in or out. Or at least according to your reading.

Its a similar misrepresentation you keep claiming that I am saying that single factors cause abuse when I have never said that.

Because their mental illness was not the risk factor it is often considered to be.

Their mental illness was not a risk factor because as your link said "mental illness that is adequately treated would not be expected to lead to increased violence risk"

But as I already linked which you ignored the majority of evidence shows
Children of parents with depression or schizophrenia are 2 times more likely to experience abuse than children of parents without mental illness;
The risk of child maltreatment was 5 to 5.6 times higher if mental illness of a family member was reported.
The total results on the Clinical Abuse Scale suggest a high risk of physical child abuse by parents with MADD

So either the article is wrong or your reading of it is wrong.

Of course they didn't. Because they were trying to look at whether mental illness was a risk factor, and they needed a cohort which experienced all of the same other challenges besides the mental illness in order to be a meaningful control group. No. In the community, they were specifically looking at people who were not psychiatric patients.

But what you fail to recognise is that they are comparing treated patients with psychiatric conditions who no longer have a risk due to treatment and comparing that with untreated parents in the population who had other risk factors. So of course treated parents who have no risk will be less of a risk than untreated parents with other risks besides mental disorders.

If they compared the patients who were untreated then the risk returns and then their risk returns and they would be as great if not greater a risk than some of the other risk factors in the general population. Your comparing apples with ornages.

I am saying there would, of course, be some risk even if they had no psychiatric diagnosis. That their diagnosis did not increase their risk, but that their treatment did not reduce it to zero.

So did treatment reduce their risk. How can their treatment reduce the risk if they were not regarded as at increased risk. You can only reduce a risk if it was a higher risk to begin with.

Or it calls into question what other studies have found.

No its the other way around. As the majority say the opposite and converge independently on the same findings that mental illness does increase the risk of abuse then its good science because the same findings have been reached by independent studies. Your links findings are an outlier if what you are saying its conclusions represent. and shown to be inconsistent and suspect.

"Is regarded as" is not the same as "is." Other sources call this into question.

Ok you want to play semantics. The findings show that psychiatric disorders are a risk factually according to the data. Is that better.

No, I'm saying that if these things are causative, even cumulatively, then we ought to be able to measure their causative contribution. Noting that two things occur together does not demonstrate that one causes the other.

We can and I have supplied ample measures of the relationships, how they feed into each other and can accumulate and increase the risk of abuse. You seem to just dimiss whole chunks of evdience like it doesn't exist.

That's part of it, but not in the way you've been trying to argue. It's not about suffering causing distress, causing cognitive impairment, causing "unreal thinking," causing abuse. It's about cultural norms justifying abusers' actions in their own minds.

Why in their minds and not others. We are all aware of those norms and not everyone abuses them. Why some people and not others. What is the determinants that cause some minds to turn this way and not others.

My point is, this is all dependent on reports.

No your once again misrepresenting things. They were based on actual protection plans. Protection plans come after the abuse is reported, investigated and abuse has been found.

Yes, but again, it's dependent on reporting. A change in the number of protection plans can simply indicate a change in reporting levels, rather than a change in levels of underlying abuse.

It wasn't about changes in reports or plans or dependent on reporting as they were just looking at existing PP's being reduced. Your creating a false analogy. It was about actual protection plans put in place due to abuse were reduced due to economic support.

My point is, that later publications from the UN cast these claims into doubt.

So it looks like the UN is not a good source as it contradicts itself. Oh thats right they were found guilty of promoting anti semetic beliefs. I can afford to disregard any articles from the Woke UN and if that implicates WHO then I am happy to disregard them as well because I have ample other good sources to support my case.

No, it's not. Because if wealth can hide abuse, then claims that there is more abuse in households in poverty can simply reflect that those households are less able to hide the abuse.

Are you serously saying that PA happens more or at the same level as deprevated communities who als happen to have a host of other issues that cannot be hidden like crime, violent gangs, DV, substance abuse ect.

It is well established through all domains of health and wellbeing that lower socioeconomic status has higher levels of mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness, DV, general violence, child abuse and neglect, finacial stress, poor education, high unemployment, juvenile delinquency ect ect. Are you saying the rich are able to hid all this as well. Your stretching things a bit too far.

The point is that at the individual level, it's changing beliefs and attitudes which is crucial.

And how do you change those beliefs and attitudes at the individual levelwithout an individual approach.

If the individual level involves individual experiences and determinants as your article says and can be different between individuals in different situations then that would require a tailored response that supports all those individual factors and not some societal wide one which overlooks those factors.

 

[Paidiske]

I'm not saying stress on its own causes abuse.

My point is, the fact of two things occurring more often together doesn't tell you anything about whether either of them contributes to the other.

Such as. There can be no other influence on our beliefs but experience. Experience will create in the person the reasons why they believe.

My point is that we have a whole lot of inputs, of all kinds, other than ones which are strongly positive or negative (however we define those terms).

To take an unrelated example, I watched an extended family at a funeral today, and the way that the adults were modelling how to handle grief, and the mixed messages to the young ones about what's normal and healthy. That may not stand out to any of those kids as strongly "positive" or "negative" experiences, but it's all formative.

Then how do we determine that abusive CP is wrong as opposed to non abusive dicipline.

Through ethical reasoning based on the facts known to us.

That is very short sighted. Relational conflict has everything to do with abuse. Abuse is the extreme result of relational conflict.

Oh, no no. Conflict can be healthy, and it can be worked through without any abuse, power, control, violence, or the like. It's a necessary part of how we do life together, whether in marriage, community, or a nation. Conflict is important, and avoiding it leads to all sorts of problems.

If measures to equalize society actually cause more inequality and results in conflict that is the very conflict that fuels violence and abuse because its making people unequal and oppressing them.

Here's the thing, though. Measures to transform injustice often do result in conflict, because for the first time the injustice is actually being named and addressed. That doesn't mean they "cause more inequality." Nor does it mean it fuels violence and abuse.

Yes and I explained that the opposite can also happen if they get it wrong,

I don't believe that feminists "get it wrong" in confronting injustice and inequality, though. We may disagree about the merits of specific actions, but that's a conversation to have as a society.

Its a justified accusation if its true that the very ideology they base restructuring society on to be more equal is unfounded and actually causes conflicts between groups and cultivates negative beliefs and attitudes towards each other that prime for violence and abuse.

No. Just no. The responsibility for the abuse always rests with the abuser. Nobody else.

"The point was, they took a cohort generally considered to have higher "risk factors," and found more abuse in the general population. Which just goes to show how shaky some of these claims about "risk factors" are" is a misrepresentation of the articles findings.

I disagree. It's an accurate statement. The whole point of that study was to examine the premise that people with those diagnoses were at higher risk of abusing, and found that they were not. The aim was to dispel the stigma and suspicion around those diagnoses.

Your ignored that the cohort that normally has high risk factors no longer was considered high risk.

No; I pointed out that the study demonstrated that the idea that this cohort needed to be considered high risk was, in fact, false.

Your implying they are comparing a high risk group untreated with the general rate in the population and then making claims that this high risk group is no more risk than the general population.

No, I am looking at the stated aims of the study, and recognising that it is looking to dispel the stigma and premise that people with these diagnoses were at higher risk, even when treated.

Your also assuming that the general population has no risk themselves

Not at all. Clearly they have significant risk, given the rates of abuse found.

So either the article is wrong or your reading of it is wrong.

Or its findings contradict other sources. Which does happen.

But what you fail to recognise is that they are comparing treated patients with psychiatric conditions who no longer have a risk due to treatment and comparing that with untreated parents in the population who had other risk factors.

No. They are not comparing treated patients with untreated patients. They are comparing treated patients with people without the same diagnoses at all.

So did treatment reduce their risk.

That was not what the study was looking at. To examine that, they would have needed another cohort; one with the same diagnoses which was not being treated, to compare abuse rates. Or a longitudinal study over a long time, following the same cohort before, during, and after treatment.

What they found was that simply having these conditions did not make that cohort more at risk of abusing than the general population; in fact, they found more abuse in the general population without comparable diagnoses.

The findings show that psychiatric disorders are a risk factually according to the data. Is that better.

I'd still say that's questionable.

We can and I have supplied ample measures of the relationships, how they feed into each other and can accumulate and increase the risk of abuse.

No, you have not provided what I mean by measuring the causative contribution of different factors.

You seem to just dimiss whole chunks of evdience like it doesn't exist.

I find a lot of what you present irrelevant, or that its conclusions don't actually amount to the claims you want to make for it.

Why in their minds and not others. We are all aware of those norms and not everyone abuses them. Why some people and not others. What is the determinants that cause some minds to turn this way and not others.

It's complex and highly individual. It's not the simplistic, one-size-fits-all pathway that you've been putting forward.

No your once again misrepresenting things. They were based on actual protection plans. Protection plans come after the abuse is reported, investigated and abuse has been found.

Yes; but my point is protection plans do not exist when abuse goes unreported. They do not give us a good indication of actual abuse levels, only of reporting levels.

So it looks like the UN is not a good source as it contradicts itself.

Actually, it's a good source because it's willing to critique its own work.

Are you serously saying that PA happens more or at the same level as deprevated communities who als happen to have a host of other issues that cannot be hidden like crime, violent gangs, DV, substance abuse ect.

I am saying that claims that abuse happens more in poverty are not well established, because we know that abuse is grossly under-reported in more affluent households.

And how do you change those beliefs and attitudes at the individual levelwithout an individual approach.

How else would you do it? I mean, there can be general societal messaging campaigns, etc, but that's only surface level stuff. The real work is done in relationships of trust.

 

[stevevw]

My point is that simply reducing reports is neither here nor there, if it's not addressing the underlying abuse.

First this is a non sequitor. It doesn't follow that reducing reports doesn't reduce abuse. It may be the efforts to reduce reports is what helps prevent abuse ie addresing the risk factors is shown to directly reduce and prevent abuse.

If we give abusive households in poverty financial support, and we find that abuse reports go down, have we stopped the abuse, or is it just better hidden now, as we know it's easier to hide abuse when financially comfortable?

None of this follows though. The financial support doesn't make parents wealthy but rather just enough to get them by to take the pressure off. They are still in a relatively disadvantageous position to wealthy privilegde and power.

Well, it's subjective in the sense that the value judgements we make on it are just that; value judgements. But we can do the best we can, with the information we have, to discourage attitudes which we know underpin abuse, and encourage attitudes which lead to healthier ways of relating.

But you have just made a value judgement. How do you defend against someone who you say thinks abuse is a rational and good thing. They believe the way to healthier ways of relating and living is by abuse.

Saying that smoking causes disease is a fact. The judgement that that disease is undesirable, and to be avoided, is a value statement.

But is it really a value statement. If staying alive and having a reasonable existence is what humans are designed for naturally then I don't think values come into it. Its just nature, a natural way to live and exist if a creature is meant to exist and live.

So its natural that we consider threats and harm to our ability to exist and live as being a danger that would threatened this and act accordingly. In other words we don't stop to consider its value because its inherently in us as humans naturally.

Then perhaps it would be good to drop the insistence that there is a straightforward pathway from "negative" experiences to committing abuse.

I mean thats what I have always been saying throughout this thread.

Earlier, you were arguing that beliefs and attitudes were not so important, that it was other risk factors, that people "just snap" due to various external pressures.

THis is a gross simplification and misrepresentation of my position. Yes I argued that beliefs and attitudes are not singularly important considering that there are many other factors that even you acknowledge. But your creating an either/or by saying that I am dismissing beliefs altogether and saying its only about other risk factors.

You don't seem to be able to grasp the idea that abuse and violence are a multifaceted and multilevel problems with no single cause but rather a combination of individual, family and societal determinants that all contribute to cause abuse.

I placed more empahasis on the determinants that drive belief and attitudes rather than the belief itself. But I never denied belief and attitudes were a part of the complex mix. Your just unhappy because I am not glorifying beliefs and attitudes alone. Thats because I think in doing so this skews any understanding and prevention of abuse. So theres a method to my madness lol. Its not about singling out anything but seeing things in their proper context.

You seem now to have switched to agreeing that beliefs and attitudes determine our behaviours, and claiming that those beliefs and attitudes are formed by various risk factors and external pressures.

Yes because as I said I first was explaining how the risk factors lead to abuse. Explaining how its not just about belief. Then I began to explain about how the risk factors also contribute to belief forming.

So I started with the data, facts showing risks for abuse and then went into explaining the mechanisms you were on about in how those risks prime people for believing in abuse which is really the root for how risk factors are involved all the way from priming beliefs to the negative outcomes of abuse.

These models are not remotely similar. So which is it, in your view?

They are exactly similar as they are associated across all levels. From personal experiences to cognitive errors, to disrorted percptions (unreal expectations) to belief formation, to behaviour. You cannot seperate these. So risk factors or determinant will have influence on all these levels or chains in the reasons why people abuse, control and are violent.

But they are different tasks. Responding to existing abuse is a very different task than preventing the next generation from becoming abusers.

I explained this earlier that they cannot be seperated and are entangled. For example the same restructuring of society to prevent abuse happens to align with the risk factors of abuse.

For example your article talked about restructuring society, equalising women's status because they were disempowered including financially. Basically equalising people not to be in a oppressor/victim situation where theres a large disparity between the opportunities, power, control of ones life compared to others.

Strangly enough all these factors are related to the risk factors where for example poor parents are disempowere and subject to the oppression from others and all that goes with having a lower socio economic status ie less education, less opportunities for work and career, less independence ect.

It is these inequalities that have been identified as the markers for creating situations where people become abused or become abusive themselves due to the stressors that are associated with being disempowered, having less control and stressed out as a result.

What I have said is that many abusers are rational, and that dealing with the attitudes which drive abuse as "irrational" is both inaccurate and unhelpful. It is all subjective; but we have a right, as a society, to make a subjective value judgement that we wish to reduce or eliminate abuse, and therefore to encourage the relevant changes in social norms, beliefs, and attitudes.

Tell me, why do they say that abusive parents have unrealistic expectations of their child. How do they measure unrealistic.

Research has found a consistent set of beliefs and attitudes shared by abusers, which they use to justify their abuse, and not shared by non-abusers. That's a pretty good start. I'm not saying we'll never nuance that understanding further, but meanwhile we can work on what we do have.

But that is a flase basis to be deter5mining which attitudes are wrong. Many people believe in rigid roles and tradfitional roles and they are not abusive beliefs. I explained this earlier.

That is why just using beliefs without the other factors can lead you down the wrong path and actually cause more damage. ie Woke ideology which promotes unhealthy beliefs to combat abuse and yet are cultivating it. You have to qualify the belief as well as to what exactly is the right beliefs that will prevent abuse.

The difference is that I have no problem owning something as a subjective value judgement, and yet being willing to act on it anyway.

But you can't then enforce it on others who have a different value judgement. Thats my point.

You dismantled the idea that we cannot tell whether an abuser is rational and deluded or not and in doing so you have also undermined any arguement you want to make that we can object to abuse or declare certain beliefs as 'the wrong one' because there is no objective basis to do so. Its all subjective value judgements.

This is the Postmodernist thinking that everything is subjective and relative and there is no truth, objective reality of facts in the world.

Sure we do. We make all sorts of subjective value judgements as a society and enshrine them in various laws, programmes, initiatives, and so on.

Such as. I would say the majority, the important ones like murder, assault, abuse, rape, violent crime, stealing are based on facts. We tried to allow murder, rape and stealing and it created chaos and undermined our very existence. We also looked at the data and found the rational and scientific reason why this happens. So we have the factual evdience from experience and data.

Of course it does. Someone's mental fitness to stand trial is a real principle.

Yes thats to stand trial itself. They are so impaired that they cannot even comprehend their behaviour in a way that they can take responsibility.

But theres another layer where people are still expected to face court but are still deminished in their responsibility. We recognise this with Drug courts for example which have a completely different sentencing format based on rehabilitation. Recognising how drugs can impair people due to psychological problems in upbringing.

But we also have reductions in sentences and orders for therapy, parenting programs, counselling ect in recognition that there are psychological issues and other mitigating circumstances behind the offenders action. Community centres offer compulsory parenting programs and relationship counselling and many organisations support offenders with community work.

Not necessarily. A person can be in error without them being cognitively distorted. Perhaps they believe something because that's all they've ever known; because that's what they've been told since they were a child. Someone could - to take a trivial example - believe the Amazon is a river in Africa without there being any particular cognitive distortion on their part; it's just that someone once told them the wrong thing, and it stuck.

Yes so thats not a cognitive error but an error in information itself. The information given to the person who has nothing else to go by. They may truely believe that but their thinking itself is not in error. Cognitive errors are actually cognitive distortions. So distortions in thinking.

Cognitive error means more than just being wrong about something. It means the brain's functioning being so flawed that it is not able to respond appropriately to reality.

Yes so the person is believing stuff, that is obviously not true and even when they are shown the facts. Flat earthers come to mind. Theres some cognitive dissonance but they cannot handle the truth, the reality of the situation so they create their unreal ideas and in the case of abusive parents unreal expectations based on those cognitive distortions of the world.

But that's not necessarily what's going on when someone is abusive.

It has to be because abusive parents have "unrealistic" expectations. In other words distorted views of things. They are claiming abuse is good for wellbeing when we can prove like the person in error about the Amazon River being in South America that abuse is actually damaging to wellbeing.

It would be like showing a Flat earther the earth is a sphere from space telescopes and then the flat earther still persisting with the belief depite the reality its a sphere. We would say they must be deluded by their beliefs. The abuser persistence in a belief that can be objectively proven to be false is the delusion. Is the unreal expectations.

Again, I disagree. And part of the problem is the simplistic characterisation of "negative" and "positive," here.

Then you have just blown all your own arguements for showing that beliefs in abuse are anything wrong. OK lets not use positive and negative. If an abuser split a childs lip or burnt their arm how would you describe that experience.

How wuld you describe the act as far as parenting goes on the child. Use whatever word you want but there has to be some difference between that and not splitting their lip or burning them. Whatever that difference is that is what measures the difference.

This idea that because we cannot determine the difference between behaviours because its a value judgement seems strange in that we can immediately tell there is a difference, the two different outcomes have different experiences attached and I don;t think for many reasons that we can say these harms are conducive for good health and well being.

And then you keep coming back to "negative" experiences, distress, cognitive impairment, rather than acknowledging any of those other influences.

No I come back to negative experiences, distress, cognitive errors, distorted perceptions, beliefs and then behaviours. This is the usual way all human behaviour is determined. I include beliefs. You are just not happy that I am mentioning the other important determinants.

This is beginning to be a much better view, because it acknowledges the role of community as mediator in belief formation.

I am glad I could meet your approval lol. But I think you missed the point.

Those are your words, not mine. It's their behaviours I find unacceptable. If changing the behaviours means challenging the beliefs, then yes, we should do that, but I'm not saying anything about those beliefs being "unreal."

Woh wait a minute here lol. You have been complaining that I am not singling out belief as the true cause of abuse and here you are saying its the behaviour and the beliefs are secondary.

If you are not saying anything about the beliefs being unreal then why do you say that abusers thinking about abuse is rational. Is it rational beyond themselves or just rational in their own little irrational world.

 

[stevevw]

I'm sorry, I simply don't agree with this. To my mind, the question of rationality, and the question of ethics, are two completely unrelated questions. You can be completely rational and completely wrong. You can be completely irrational and yet still behave in ways that are doing the right thing.

Yes but that is not what is happening, It doesn't matter if its about facts which I think it is as far as human wellbeing and health is concerned. Abusers are saying abuse is good for the childs wellbeing and making a better person. But the facts show this is not the case.

It has nothing to do with ethics. Saying eating rat poison is not good for physical health or abuse damages pssychological welbeing is not about ethics. Its about measuring the health and wellbeing of humans and whether or not those actions support this or not.

You don't need ethics to show that a child with psychological trauma from abuse who cannot function properly and have a life is not a case of ethics but of reality in that they are damage to function as a human to its potential.

Well, it can be part of the problem. It's just not a problem because of "cognitive error."

It has to be because of cognitive errors or distortions. If belief in in rigid roles and hiearchies are not abusive beliefs to hold themselves then it can only be the distorting of those beliefs into something used to abuse.

Thus destinguishing between non abusive beliefs and abusive beliefs. The beliefs are being distorted beyond the rational and appropriate beliefs into a skewed belief that takes those roles and positions and uses them to abuse.

Because as a society we've decided abuse is bad. Just like we've decided murder is bad, and theft is bad, and rape is bad. They're all value judgements, but we can still make those judgements in a democracy.

And why did we decide that murder, stealing, rape and abuse was bad again.

Well, we look at which ones underpin the problematic behaviour.

And why is it problematic behaviour.

What do abusers believe that non-abusers don't?

So abusive parents use abusive CP so they believe in using CP the same as non abusers. So the belief is not the problem. What destingusihes these two parents where one abuses based on the exact same belief as the non abuser.

No, they don't. We went through this. At best there's some overlap on some points. But the instruments leave out several factors which drive abuse, and measure other factors which don't drive abuse.

You even linked one of the measuring scales the rational and irrational parental beliefs scale.

 

[Paidiske]

It doesn't follow that reducing reports doesn't reduce abuse.

The point is, we don't know. There are good reasons to be doubtful of claims that reduced reports in changed financial circumstances means actual reduced abuse. And without actually measuring it, we don't know, and cannot claim that additional financial support reduces abuse.

But you have just made a value judgement.

Sure. I'm not saying value judgements are bad; in fact they are deeply necessary. But we need to be honest about when we're doing that.

How do you defend against someone who you say thinks abuse is a rational and good thing.

We present the evidence of harm, and argue that that harm ought to override the perceived benefits of the abusive behaviour. And we provide support and care through the difficult and personally costly process of change.

But is it really a value statement.

Yes. Anything which places a value on something - "good," "bad," "right," "wrong," and so on - is a value statement.

If staying alive and having a reasonable existence is what humans are designed for naturally then I don't think values come into it.

Well, that's a pretty arguable first premise, right there. But even if it were true that "staying alive and having a reasonable existence is what humans are designed for naturally," deciding that we wanted to live in accordance with that design would be a matter of values.

I mean thats what I have always been saying throughout this thread.

Your position does not seem to be consistent, at all.

They are exactly similar

No, they aren't. One denies the role of attitudes and beliefs of the abuser (remember all those times you accused me of accusing "good people" of having "secret beliefs" which justify abuse?) and locates the drivers for abuse in external influences. Another acknowledges the role of attitudes and beliefs and looks to the role of external influences in forming those attitudes and beliefs. Very, very different models of what causes abuse.

I explained this earlier that they cannot be seperated and are entangled.

I disagree. Sure, they're related, but they certainly can be separated.

Tell me, why do they say that abusive parents have unrealistic expectations of their child. How do they measure unrealistic.

I gather they mean something like age-inappropriate. Like expecting infants not to cry, and punishing them when they do.

But that is a flase basis to be deter5mining which attitudes are wrong. Many people believe in rigid roles and tradfitional roles and they are not abusive beliefs.

Just because you don't like what the research shows, doesn't mean the results are wrong.

But you can't then enforce it on others who have a different value judgement. Thats my point.

To some degree we can and do. As a society, we put legal boundaries in place. Some people have values which mean they dislike or uncomfortable with those boundaries, but we have them anyway.

You dismantled the idea that we cannot tell whether an abuser is rational and deluded or not and in doing so you have also undermined any arguement you want to make that we can object to abuse or declare certain beliefs as 'the wrong one' because there is no objective basis to do so. Its all subjective value judgements.

Sure, it's all subjective. But we can - and do - still enshrine particular subjective value judgements in our society, because they seem right to a majority of us collectively, for the common good.

This is the Postmodernist thinking that everything is subjective and relative and there is no truth, objective reality of facts in the world.

It's avoiding the category error of thinking that values are facts.

Such as. I would say the majority, the important ones like murder, assault, abuse, rape, violent crime, stealing are based on facts. We tried to allow murder, rape and stealing and it created chaos and undermined our very existence. We also looked at the data and found the rational and scientific reason why this happens. So we have the factual evdience from experience and data.

I'd still argue that banning those things results from a value judgement. The results of this thing are bad (there's the value judgement); we will forbid it in our community.

Yes thats to stand trial itself. They are so impaired that they cannot even comprehend their behaviour in a way that they can take responsibility.

Exactly.

But theres another layer where people are still expected to face court but are still deminished in their responsibility. We recognise this with Drug courts for example which have a completely different sentencing format based on rehabilitation. Recognising how drugs can impair people due to psychological problems in upbringing.

And do we have "abuse courts"? No. Because abuse is not the same.

Yes so thats not a cognitive error but an error in information itself. The information given to the person who has nothing else to go by. They may truely believe that but their thinking itself is not in error.

And I would argue that forming the beliefs which underpin abuse is more akin to that, than to the brain not working properly.

Then you have just blown all your own arguements for showing that beliefs in abuse are anything wrong. OK lets not use positive and negative. If an abuser split a childs lip or burnt their arm how would you describe that experience.

We were not speaking of the impact on the child, but of the internal state of the abuser.

No I come back to negative experiences, distress, cognitive errors, distorted perceptions, beliefs and then behaviours. This is the usual way all human behaviour is determined.

A sweeping claim I find completely inaccurate.

You have been complaining that I am not singling out belief as the true cause of abuse and here you are saying its the behaviour and the beliefs are secondary.

The behaviour is the issue. If people held all the beliefs that we've found to underpin abuse, but didn't actually abuse, there'd be no issue. It's only when it actually results in abuse that it becomes worth concerning ourselves with, as a society.

If you are not saying anything about the beliefs being unreal then why do you say that abusers thinking about abuse is rational. Is it rational beyond themselves or just rational in their own little irrational world.

It is rational in the sense that they have the use of their faculties, and are not emotionally overwhelmed, out of control, "just snapped," but are making choices in line with their attitudes and beliefs.

It has nothing to do with ethics.

Of course it does. Any time we are speaking of the rightness, goodness, or fitness (or otherwise) of behaviours, we are in the realm of ethics.

It has to be because of cognitive errors or distortions.

I'm sorry, but that's your claim, and doesn't stack up in the real world.

And why did we decide that murder, stealing, rape and abuse was bad again.

Because we place a value on life, on wellbeing, on the possession of property. Those are value judgements.

And why is it problematic behaviour.

Because we place a value on not traumatising kids. Again, it's a value judgement.

So abusive parents use abusive CP so they believe in using CP the same as non abusers. So the belief is not the problem.

Well, no. Their beliefs are subtly different. The abusive parent will not believe in restraint in their violence. They will believe in their right to control their children, even with force and violence. They will believe in the hierarchy and rigid roles which they will reinforce with that control and violence. In a way that a non-abusive parent will not.

You even linked one of the measuring scales the rational and irrational parental beliefs scale.

Yes. And we went through and looked at what it was measuring, and found that there was only a small overlap with the beliefs and attitudes which drive abuse.

One could depict it like this, where the overlapping section is where the scale was measuring things related to the beliefs and attitudes which drive abuse. But it was measuring a lot that wasn't related to abuse, and abuse was driven by beliefs and attitudes not related to what the scale was measuring.

Your just unhappy because I am not glorifying beliefs and attitudes alone.

I have moved this point to the end of the post, because I think it's actually the crux of our conversation.

At this point, I am "unhappy" because your position seems to me to be inconsistent and unclear; and to the extent that I can work out what you're actually claiming, founded on faulty premises, buttressed by drawing on irrelevant sources or those which don't support your claim, and - bluntly - taken up in part in order to defend values and norms which are part of the problem. It's easy to point to "negative" experiences, "risk factors" like household structure, mental illness and poverty, and so on, in order to deflect attention from the problems of corporal punishment, hierarchy, power and control, and rigid roles, when they represent a "traditional" ideal one wants to see go unchallenged and unchanged.

 

[stevevw]

The point is, we don't know. There are good reasons to be doubtful of claims that reduced reports in changed financial circumstances means actual reduced abuse. And without actually measuring it, we don't know, and cannot claim that additional financial support reduces abuse.

Once again that particular link was not talking about reports but actual Protection Plans put in place after investigating reports. So they are about real abuse that actually happened.

Sure. I'm not saying value judgements are bad; in fact they are deeply necessary. But we need to be honest about when we're doing that.

I still don't understand how value judgements determine whether abuse took place or which beliefs are the appropriate ones. How does honesty solve that problem when honesty can be a value judgement itself. Its a circular arguement.

We need some objective basis as to what exactly is or is not abuse and what exactly are the right types of attitudes and beliefs to have. Otherwise we end up with all sorts of crazy ideas and claims and no way to sort out which is real and appropriate and which is not.

We present the evidence of harm, and argue that that harm ought to override the perceived benefits of the abusive behaviour. And we provide support and care through the difficult and personally costly process of change.

So all this time you have been arguing that the abusers thinking is rational and reality is defeated by your own statement that we can tell the abusers thinking and behaviour is unreal through the "evidence" the scientific evidence. The evdience that shows the abusers belief that abuse is good for wellbeing and making an upright adult is irrational according to the science and reality.

Yes. Anything which places a value on something - "good," "bad," "right," "wrong," and so on - is a value statement.

I disagree. I mean sure saying 'eating rat poison' is bad for your health is making a value judgement. But its not a value judgement based on subjective beliefs or thinking. Its really a natural and instinctual sense or inclination to think and belief that poisoning something thats living and making it sick and die is just against the instinct to survive and thrive.

Well, that's a pretty arguable first premise, right there.

What that humans are designed to live and thrive and not die. This is just a natural instinct.

But even if it were true that "staying alive and having a reasonable existence is what humans are designed for naturally," deciding that we wanted to live in accordance with that design would be a matter of values.

Why, we don;t even think about it by nature. Its not a matter we stop and think about as to its value. Its just inherently in us being something that lives and does not want to cease or does not want to feel sick and be damaged when alive.

Your position does not seem to be consistent, at all.

If thats what I have been saying throughout the thread how can it not be consistent. Its just different ways to argue the same thing. Considering you have been so resistent that's what happens. You try different angles to make the same point hoping the person will eventually understand.

No, they aren't. One denies the role of attitudes and beliefs of the abuser

For one to dent the role of beliefs and attitudes of the abuser they have to first be primed to believe that through experience. So denying that abusive attitudes are abusive actually comes from the same place as parents who hold unreal expectations of their children and usse abuse.

(remember all those times you accused me of accusing "good people" of having "secret beliefs" which justify abuse?) and locates the drivers for abuse in external influences.

How does this refute that the beliefs and attitudes do not stem from personal experience, cognition, emotion, perceptions and then belief, in that order. How does this refute that risk factors that cause negative experiences or not the same factors involved in behaviour that abuses.

Another acknowledges the role of attitudes and beliefs and looks to the role of external influences in forming those attitudes and beliefs. Very, very different models of what causes abuse.

No its not. Because the extrnal sources are what acts on the person to give the experiences which then form beliefs. Its all connected. You can't seperate out beliefs and say they are isolated or a special aspect of human thinking and behaviour. They are entangled in experiences, c ognition, emotion and the perceptions we form as a result of those experiences.

We base our beliefs on our perceptions of the world not on what others tell us.

I disagree. Sure, they're related, but they certainly can be separated.

I mean you can seperate them for research purposes but you cannot seperate these aspects of humans as they are entangled. Your experiences are entangled with your cognition and emotions, these are entangled with your the perceptions you make of the world which is then entangled with belief.

Which is a mixture of individual, family and societal influences. You can't single out any of these and say they are not directly affected by the other and act alone as a factor that influences humans and behaviour. Which you seem to be doing. Its like seperating a body part and saying it can exist as a force on its own without the other body parts and systems around it.

Peel back the layers of human consciousness, and you’ll find an intricate dance of thoughts, emotions, and beliefs.
Caught in the Storm: Understanding and Managing Lashing Out - The Daily Positive

The processes of believing integrate external perceptual information from the environment with internal emotional states and prior experience to generate probabilistic neural representations of events, i.e., beliefs.

Believing and social interactions: effects on bodily expressions and personal narratives

The processes of believing integrate external perceptual information from the environment with internal emotional states and prior experience to generate probabilistic neural representations of events, i.e., beliefs. As these neural representations manifest ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

In other words we take in the external world as perceptions and they are integrated with emotions and experiences when then create the mental representations that form belie. Belief is the end result of these aspects and cannot happen without them. If the experiences and emotional states are percieved as negative then the mental representations or perceptions are also skewed. In other words parental unreal expectations and beliefs.

I gather they mean something like age-inappropriate. Like expecting infants not to cry, and punishing them when they do.

Yes thats could be involved. But also that abusive punishment is good or that the behaviour is deserving of abusive punishment when it was just an age appropriate behaviour. Or the expectation that a person needs to control things because of a unreal perception of threat like things will turn out bad if I don't ensure this particular situation to happen.

So these expectations are unreal and have the same unrealness that other beliefs have like the world is going to end next year, or everyones out to get me, I need to force women to be subservient because I will lose control, or that its ok to use violence and harm others to achieve something unrealistically percieved as justified ect.

Just because you don't like what the research shows, doesn't mean the results are wrong.

No I am showing that this is a flawed basis for the research if thats whats its based on. You can't single out a belief and say that belief is abusive or leads to abuse when many people hold that same belief and don't think its abusive or abuse.

You have to destinguish whats within the person and not the belief as to why they abuse and not the belief itself. Otherwise you demonise natural beliefs which is what some Feminist and Woke ideologues do and this just causes more harm and abuse because they have a skews belief themselves.

To some degree we can and do. As a society, we put legal boundaries in place. Some people have values which mean they dislike or uncomfortable with those boundaries, but we have them anyway.

But look at the core ones, the ones that really matter as to how society can exist together. Like murder, rape, assulat and stealing. There is no subjectivity on these core behaviours as we know from first hand experience and data that not linmiting these acts will destroy society. So we have good evidence and anyone who dislikes this we can say is either a danger to society or they are deluded to think they are good for society.

Sure, it's all subjective. But we can - and do - still enshrine particular subjective value judgements in our society, because they seem right to a majority of us collectively, for the common good.

But other societies have supported the opposite "because they seem right to a majority of us collectively, for the common good". Tell me why do these values "seem right to a majority of us collectively, for the common good". Surely it must be more than just subjective common agreement. We don;t say to someone who breaks these subjective judgements, that they are wrong because the majority says so. That seems unjustified.

It's avoiding the category error of thinking that values are facts.

No its conflating that there are no facts or objective reality and that everything including facts, the long held truths we have come to know through experience are all subjective or realtive. Its actually making reality itself as subjective. Like saying the earth is a sphere and believing that it all depends on how people see and feel things as to whether its a sphere or not.

I'd still argue that banning those things results from a value judgement. The results of this thing are bad (there's the value judgement); we will forbid it in our community.

No they are not conducive for a sociey to live and function. Theres nothing subjective about it. We can show the evdience how how these behaviours breakdown cooperation, trust, order and unravel society into chaos.

We can show examples where this happened in our experience over and over again with the same outcome. Anyone who claims that these are ok behaviours can be refuted by these facts and b e rejected out of that society.

And do we have "abuse courts"? No. Because abuse is not the same.

Yes we do they are called
Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Court

Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Court

The Domestic and Family Violence Specialist Court – its history, aims, currently operating locations, cultural supports and who is involved

www.courts.qld.gov.au

But even when we don't the court often puts in place special orders relation to counselling, family and couples therapy, anger management, assiction programs if involved. This is recognition that these matters often involve psychological and relationship problems.

Why didn't you mention the rest of my post. This is a good example of how you misrepresent and side step things. I also explained how even general courts acknowledge the mitigating circumstances like psychological problems with court orders for family therapy ect and you just completely ignored it and chose to repreat the same fallacy.

And I would argue that forming the beliefs which underpin abuse is more akin to that, than to the brain not working properly.

Then this is wrong according to the evidence for what type of thinking these unrealistic beliefs are based on. Unlike your example of the person making an error of informations due to wrong information for which they can update that information and then be willing to change their mind and beliefs cognitive errors or distortions are different.

It would be like the person after being shown the correct evdience that the Nile is in South America rather than update the error to facts they would disregard the facts and go on to promote and push onto others the belief that the Nile is factually in Africa. Just like the Flat Earthers despite being shown evdience still believe in the delusion of a flat earth.

 

[Paidiske]

Once again that particular link was not talking about reports but actual Protection Plans put in place after investigating reports. So they are about real abuse that actually happened.

Yes; but the point is that they are the result of reports. Without reports there can be no plan. So if abuse occurs but is not reported, it would not be captured in such a study.

I still don't understand how value judgements determine whether abuse took place or which beliefs are the appropriate ones.

To call something "abuse" is a value judgement. To say something is "appropriate" is a value judgement. There is no other way to determine abuse or appropriateness other than through value judgements.

We need some objective basis as to what exactly is or is not abuse and what exactly are the right types of attitudes and beliefs to have. Otherwise we end up with all sorts of crazy ideas and claims and no way to sort out which is real and appropriate and which is not.

I'm sorry, no such objective basis can exist. And yes, all sorts of crazy ideas are part of the landscape of dealing with this. But we still have to do the best we can, as a society, to make value judgements and enshrine some ethical norms.

So all this time you have been arguing that the abusers thinking is rational and reality is defeated by your own statement that we can tell the abusers thinking and behaviour is unreal through the "evidence" the scientific evidence.

I have never conflated rationality and reality. Nor have I said anything about "unreal" thinking and behaviour. I have said that the evidence gives us some basis on which to argue for a different set of values.

I disagree. I mean sure saying 'eating rat poison' is bad for your health is making a value judgement. But its not a value judgement based on subjective beliefs or thinking.

In that case, "bad for your health" is an accurate statement. But "bad" as an absolute statement is a value judgement. We don't have to think too hard to think of reasons why people might sacrifice health or wellbeing for what they perceive to be a greater good.

What that humans are designed to live and thrive and not die. This is just a natural instinct.

You said, "If staying alive and having a reasonable existence is what humans are designed for naturally," and that's an arguable premise on a number of grounds. Not least the idea of "design" in the first place.

Why, we don;t even think about it by nature. Its not a matter we stop and think about as to its value. Its just inherently in us being something that lives and does not want to cease or does not want to feel sick and be damaged when alive.

And yet many of us make decisions which compromise our health and longevity because we believe them to be "worth it." So the value we place upon health and longevity is not absolute.

Its just different ways to argue the same thing.

I don't think it amounts to the same thing, at all. Arguing for external influences as determinative of behaviour, vs. arguing for external influences as formative of beliefs, are two very very different positions.

You try different angles to make the same point hoping the person will eventually understand.

I do not believe there is anything you could possibly say at this point, that would make any of your arguments seem credible to me.

We base our beliefs on our perceptions of the world not on what others tell us.

It's not really that simple, at all.

I mean you can seperate them for research purposes but you cannot seperate these aspects of humans as they are entangled.

More than research purposes, you can separate them in terms of actual action. Primary prevention is different work than intervention in existing situations of abuse.

In other words we take in the external world as perceptions and they are integrated with emotions and experiences when then create the mental representations that form belie.

So it is not, and cannot be, a simple matter of "positive" or "negative" experiences.

No I am showing that this is a flawed basis for the research if thats whats its based on.

You are showing absolutely no such thing.

You can't single out a belief and say that belief is abusive or leads to abuse when many people hold that same belief and don't think its abusive or abuse.

But we can look at a cluster of beliefs, and say these beliefs, when held together, are characteristic of those who abuse, and not found together in those who don't abuse.

Otherwise you demonise natural beliefs ... and this just causes more harm and abuse because they have a skews belief themselves.

"Natural" is, firstly, not a category I would accept for beliefs, and, secondly, not another way of saying "good," "right," or "appropriate." Even if I were to concede that some beliefs are "natural," that still might mean they are a problem, if they are found to underpin abuse.

But look at the core ones, the ones that really matter as to how society can exist together. Like murder, rape, assulat and stealing. There is no subjectivity on these core behaviours as we know from first hand experience and data that not linmiting these acts will destroy society.

Well, of course there's subjectivity. And I don't even buy the argument that not limiting these acts will "destroy society."

Tell me why do these values "seem right to a majority of us collectively, for the common good". Surely it must be more than just subjective common agreement.

No, I don't think it really is more than that.

We don;t say to someone who breaks these subjective judgements, that they are wrong because the majority says so. That seems unjustified.

We say to them that they have broken the social contract that says they are free to behave as they wish in society as long as they observe the agreed boundaries. And then we might penalise them for breaking those boundaries. But those boundaries really are just a matter of majority agreement, especially in our kind of democracy.

No its conflating that there are no facts or objective reality and that everything including facts, the long held truths we have come to know through experience are all subjective or realtive.

Nope. Gravity is a fact. The valence of a hydrogen atom is a fact. That plant cells make their own sugar by photosynthesis is a fact. But "x is good," or "y is bad," is a value judgement. Goodness or badness is not a matter of fact. There is no physical or chemical property there to be measured.

No they are not conducive for a sociey to live and function. Theres nothing subjective about it.

And yet we allow some behaviours which are not conducive for a society to live and function, because we value freedom, or autonomy, or profit-making, or some other thing. It's all a matter of relative value jugdements.

Yes we do they are called
Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Court

Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Court

The Domestic and Family Violence Specialist Court – its history, aims, currently operating locations, cultural supports and who is involved

www.courts.qld.gov.au

I had not head of these before. I take it they are a Queensland thing?

Either way, their aims are not similar to what you stated for drug courts, where the process differs due to reduced agency or moral capacity on the part of the perpetrator; but these specialist courts mostly seem to exist to improve the (generally appalling) experience for the victims in the standard courts.

But even when we don't the court often puts in place special orders relation to counselling, family and couples therapy, anger management, assiction programs if involved. This is recognition that these matters often involve psychological and relationship problems.

But not recognition of reduced capacity.

Why didn't you mention the rest of my post.

As I've said, I move on past a lot of stuff that seems irrelevant. I am not going to respond in detail to every red herring with which you flood the thread.

 

[stevevw]

We were not speaking of the impact on the child, but of the internal state of the abuser.

Its connected because however we determine the behaviour that inflicts that experience on another is how we determine the behaviour of the abuser, their state of mind and beliefs. If the experience of the victim is psychological distress then the parent is creating the distress in the child and in the environment then this reflects where the parent is also at within themselves.

A sweeping claim I find completely inaccurate.

Please refer to the evidence I posssted in my last post that this is a normal process for humans and is not inaccurate but science.

The behaviour is the issue. If people held all the beliefs that we've found to underpin abuse, but didn't actually abuse, there'd be no issue.

But the majority of people do hold those beliefs. Not in an abusive way but in a natural way. For example we inherently believe in hierarchies because they are part of nature and a natural way societies order themselves ie hiearchies of economics, work,

Social structures, in almost all cases, are defined by some form of hierarchy. Whether in academics, sports, religion, business, or politics, there's usually someone at the top and others whose goal it is to get there. But while it's easy to think that we've designed our world to be this way, the truth may be that we had no choice.

Among our primate ancestors and other social animals we can see similar hierarchies in place: Alpha males dominating the troop while subordinates fall in line, pecking orders among various birds and dominance hierarchies among wolf packs. Even insects such as bees and termites form their own systems of social ranking.

Understanding Hierarchies In Nature And Society

Social structures, in almost all cases, are defined by some form of hierarchy. Whether in academics, sports, religion, business, or politics, there's…

www.ctpublic.org

So there must be something that destinguishes those who turn these natural inclinations into abuse. The only destinguishing factor is that something in the person and not in the hierarchy itself is distorting this natural inclination.

It's only when it actually results in abuse that it becomes worth concerning ourselves with, as a society.

I thought prevention programs were about being concerned with thinking and belief well before it actually becomes abuse.

It is rational in the sense that they have the use of their faculties, and are not emotionally overwhelmed, out of control, "just snapped," but are making choices in line with their attitudes and beliefs.

Thats not about rationality but whether they have the faculties to think and feel in the first place. They have the use of their faculties but they are not working properly and have distorted thinking ie unreal expectations and beliefs.

Of course it does. Any time we are speaking of the rightness, goodness, or fitness (or otherwise) of behaviours, we are in the realm of ethics.

We don't stop and work out the ethics of staying alive or feeling safe or feeling happy. They just happen, and come as a result of just being human depending on how we actually live in real terms. They are instincts not ethics. Ethics comes later when we work out the details of how these basic inclinations are applied in specific situations.

I'm sorry, but that's your claim, and doesn't stack up in the real world.

No I keep repeating this and you keep side stepping it. I linked the evdience that abusive parents have unreal expectations and beliefs. I linked this showing the normal process in which humans come to belief. Beliefs in abusive behaviour is not some special category that is somehow immune to these normal humans processes.

Because we place a value on life, on wellbeing, on the possession of property. Those are value judgements.

Why do we place value on them. That is the question. On what rational basis do we make these things of value. Perhaps that life itself is intrinsically of value regardless of sbjective value judgements. We know it in our genes, our hearts and minds its just there in nature. A person cannot come to any other subjective value as a conclusion unless there is something wrong psychologically.

Because we place a value on not traumatising kids. Again, it's a value judgement.

But why do we place value on this and not the opposite of traumatising kids. What is the basis for this value. Surely its not some arbitrarily determined feeling or belief as that would imply that all values purely based on feelings or beliefs are equal. There has to be a rational basis. as opposed to an irrational one that values traumatising kids.

Well, no. Their beliefs are subtly different. The abusive parent will not believe in restraint in their violence.

OK so theres the lack of control. Their belief prevents them from restraining themselves. But why would their belief prevent them from restraining themselves and allowing themselves to get out of control and cross that line. It must be something in them that is not in others who do restrain themselves.

They will believe in their right to control their children, even with force and violence. They will believe in the hierarchy and rigid roles which they will reinforce with that control and violence. In a way that a non-abusive parent will not.

So why do they get to this point as opposed to non abusers who are subject to the same ideas and beliefs but don't distort them to abuse.

Yes. And we went through and looked at what it was measuring, and found that there was only a small overlap with the beliefs and attitudes which drive abuse.

One could depict it like this, where the overlapping section is where the scale was measuring things related to the beliefs and attitudes which drive abuse. But it was measuring a lot that wasn't related to abuse, and abuse was driven by beliefs and attitudes not related to what the scale was measuring.

OK so I assume the overlap is the distortion of beliefs to abuse at the centre is part of the same wider community beliefs depicted unshaded. So the question is why do those people at the centre distort a normal societal belief and make it abusive and not the majority of people.

What are these other beliefs, Its very vague and hard to define as belief is so subjective.

I have moved this point to the end of the post, because I think it's actually the crux of our conversation.

At this point, I am "unhappy" because your position seems to me to be inconsistent and unclear; and to the extent that I can work out what you're actually claiming, founded on faulty premises, buttressed by drawing on irrelevant sources or those which don't support your claim, and - bluntly - taken up in part in order to defend values and norms which are part of the problem. It's easy to point to "negative" experiences, "risk factors" like household structure, mental illness and poverty, and so on, in order to deflect attention from the problems of corporal punishment, hierarchy, power and control, and rigid roles, when they represent a "traditional" ideal one wants to see go unchallenged and unchanged.

You have just made an unsupported assertion thats all. I have provided ample evdience, you ignored most and made fallacies about most of the rest.

I have continually knocked down those fallacies and show you constantly misrepresent things, change goal posts, create either/or fallacies, non sequitors, false analogies and basically just throw mud in the guise of , "its not that simple and theres more to it" or "the article doesn't say what it actually says or the experts are ignorant" without any explanation or evidence whatsoever. Like there is some special meaning that you only hold as to the causes and everyone else is wrong.

While at the same to pushing a simplistic and narrow ideology that dismisses hard evidence and reality of how humans are. I liken it to someone denying the earth is a sphere depite the reams of evidence. A good example of how belief can bias people from reality.

My position is simple and I explained this many times. That abuse and violence are a complex multifaceted and multilevel issue involving many determinants (risk factors) that even your own links support. Somehow you ignore all this and dig in.

I can go back if you want and show exactly how you misrepresented things and how you ignored much of the evdience. Here is a couple of general quotes that support my position from reputable sources that say exactly what I have said. I am just searching "why do parents abuse their child" and the results all support what I said and not one single out belief and attitudes but list them in among many other factors as part of the process.

This link also goes into the risk factors. that cause abuse which are exactly the same as what I have been saying.
There’s no simple answer that will help explain why some parents or adults abuse children. As with many things, the factors that lead to child abuse are complex and often interwoven with other issues.

Causes of Child Abuse: Why Some Adults Hurt Children

It can be difficult to understand the causes of child abuse. Why would anyone hurt a child? Stress, lack of support, and growing up in an abusive home may all lead to abuse. Concerned friends, family members, and community groups can help stop it.

www.healthline.com

This is from the Australian Institute of Family Studies and they support exactly what I have been saying.
'effective child abuse prevention must develop from a strong child, family and services base. Unless children and families have adequate housing, health, education and income security, efforts to prevent child abuse will be hindered.

Child abuse and neglect

This article focuses on one of the priority issues identified by the National Council for the International Year of the Family - to address the problems of family violence.

aifs.gov.au

This is from Child Protection and the Australian Child Protection Act. They mention that there is no single cause and that the stress and other risk factors are part of the cause exactly what I am saying.
There are many things that can cause child abuse. The reasons are often complex, and there’s no single or simple explanation. Most parents want to love and care for their child in a safe home. Stress, tiredness or lack of parenting skills or family support make the pressures of caring for a child overwhelming, and can cause abuse.

Child abuse

Find out about child abuse, including what it is, what can cause it, how to recognise it, what to do if you suspect it is happening, why you should report it, and how to report it.

www.dcssds.qld.gov.au

This is from the American Psychological Association (APA). It goes into those many forces and guess what they support exactly what I am saying.
Understanding and Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect
There is no single cause of child maltreatment; rather, it occurs as a result of many forces working together to impact the family.

Understanding and preventing child abuse and neglect

Acts or failures to act that result in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation, or that present an imminent risk of serious harm.

www.apa.org

This is from the U.S. Department of Justice including child safety.
There is no single reason why people abuse others. Some adults abuse children because they themselves were abused when they were children. Others just can’t handle their feelings in a healthy way; they might be worried about something, like a problem at work or not having enough money to pay their bills, and take it out on their kids. Drinking alcohol or using drugs can also make it hard for some people to control their actions.

OVC Help Series for Crime Victims

This series of nine brochures features information and resources for victims of crime and victim service professionals on the topics of assault, child abuse, domestic violence, homicide, impaired driving, robbery, sexual violence, and stalking.

ovc.ojp.gov

No single factor or set of factors can be expected to “cause” child maltreatment. Rather, any or all of these factors may independently or interdependently contribute to the probability that a child is abused or neglected.

Risk Factors for Child and Adolescent Maltreatment: A Longitudinal Investigation of a Cohort of Inner-City Youth - PMC

This study investigates associations between individual, family, and extrafamilial factors and the likelihood of subsequent childhood and adolescent maltreatment. The authors analyzed 1,411 participants in the Chicago Longitudinal Study whose ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Belsky’s (1993) multi-dimensional theory on the etiology of child maltreatment assumes that relations between multiple risk and protective factors, both within and between the immediate interactional (proximal) context of the child and the broader child context, cause child maltreatment.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213420302775#bib0130

This is just from the first page of returns by simply asking "what causes child abuse". But page after page and reputable source after reputable source all say the same thing as I am saying. That its a multifaceted and level problems that has no single cause but rather risk factors working together to build increased risk to the point of abuse.

Add this to the 40 or 50 odd already linked articles and we now have a clear and well supported case that you cannot refute. If I am wrong then all the experts are wrong.

Yet you still want to dispute this. Your just not happy that I don't share your ideological and narrow view of things.

 

[Paidiske]

If the experience of the victim is psychological distress then the parent is creating the distress in the child and in the environment then this reflects where the parent is also at within themselves.

Well, not necessarily. This is an assumption, but it doesn't follow.

But the majority of people do hold those beliefs.

Evidence required, that the majority of people hold a cluster of beliefs a) justifying violence, b) valuing hierarchy, power and control, and c) valuing rigid household roles.

Not in an abusive way but in a natural way.

Again, "abusive" and "natural" are not necessarily mutually exclusive terms.

For example we inherently believe in hierarchies because they are part of nature and a natural way societies order themselves ie hiearchies of economics, work,

I don't agree that "we" inherently believe in anything.

So there must be something that destinguishes those who turn these natural inclinations into abuse.

Since I think a number of the premises underlying this claim are completely baseless, it follows that I find this claim completely baseless, as well.

I thought prevention programs were about being concerned with thinking and belief well before it actually becomes abuse.

Yes; with preventing the formation of the beliefs which result in abuse. If beliefs don't result in abuse, then they're not of concern here, no matter how "unreal" anyone might think they are.

Thats not about rationality but whether they have the faculties to think and feel in the first place.

And what is rationality if not the faculty to think, to reason?

They have the use of their faculties but they are not working properly and have distorted thinking ie unreal expectations and beliefs.

Whether or not that's true (I still think it's overstated, at best, as contributing to abusive behaviour), if they have the use of their faculties, and can choose to abuse or not, that's enough to make them culpable.

We don't stop and work out the ethics of staying alive or feeling safe or feeling happy. They just happen, and come as a result of just being human depending on how we actually live in real terms. They are instincts not ethics.

Sorry, no. We might run on ethical autopilot a lot of the time, but that doesn't mean change the fact that questions of good, bad, right, wrong, are ethical questions.

No I keep repeating this and you keep side stepping it.

I think your repeated claim is baseless and unsubstantiated. What more do you want me to say?

Why do we place value on them. That is the question.

Why is that even vaguely relevant to this thread?

Surely its not some arbitrarily determined feeling or belief as that would imply that all values purely based on feelings or beliefs are equal.

I'm not sure why we would even ask whether they're equal. They're values held by different people. Is that not enough?

There has to be a rational basis.

I'm not sure there is a rational basis to all our values. Sure, you can argue for some of them - and there are some very sophisticated arguments made around that, and one might even find some of them persuasive - but in the end, we value what we value.

OK so theres the lack of control.

There's a difference between a lack of control, and a lack of restraint. One can choose to be unrestrained in one's actions; I'm not sure one can choose to be out of control.

Their belief prevents them from restraining themselves.

Or perhaps better put, their belief doesn't require them to restrain themselves

It must be something in them that is not in others who do restrain themselves.

A greater acceptance of violence would seem to account for that.

So why do they get to this point as opposed to non abusers who are subject to the same ideas and beliefs but don't distort them to abuse.

Presumably a non-abusive parent who holds all of these ideas (not that I really believe such a person exists, but I'll go with it as a hypothetical) would only hold them to a very mild or weak degree. Or perhaps has other things going on, such as holding such beliefs but also not having the self-discipline to enforce them in his or her household.

OK so I assume the overlap is the distortion of beliefs to abuse at the centre is part of the same wider community beliefs depicted unshaded.

No (I don't know why the labels didn't paste; weird). On the one side, we have "traits measured by irrational beliefs scale." On the other side, we have "beliefs and attitudes which underpin abuse." You will see that there is only partial overlap of both sets. So the irrational beliefs scales are not accurately measuring the beliefs and attitudes which underpin abuse, and the beliefs and attitudes which underpin abuse are not all reflected in the irrational beliefs scale.

Add this to the 40 or 50 odd already linked articles and we now have a clear and well supported case that you cannot refute. If I am wrong then all the experts are wrong.

And yet I have been able to critique your argument and provide sources to back up those critiques, every step of the way. "All the experts" do not agree with you.

Your just not happy that I don't share your ideological and narrow view of things.

That is simply not true. I profoundly disagree with you, and I believe your position to be part of the problem, in that it denies the importance of the real drivers of abuse. I believe I stand on very solid ground in my position, not least because of my professional experience in primary prevention. That you want to dismiss this by making it about my emotions and "narrowness" of view only discredits your own position.

 

[stevevw]

Well, not necessarily. This is an assumption, but it doesn't follow.

I get this feeling that if I said the earth is sphere shaped and not flat you may say "Well, not necessarily" lol. Surely we can establish some things as 'necessarily so' through the evidence.

I don't think you can detach the distress inflicted from abuse onto a child and into the home environment without the abusive parent also being in some way affected by the same environment of their own making just like anyone else who is within that environment.

I think the evidence is quite strong showing all members within a household will be effected by abuse and violence whether they are the victim or non victims including the abusive parent. She is human after all.

Evidence required, that the majority of people hold a cluster of beliefs a) justifying violence, b) valuing hierarchy, power and control, and c) valuing rigid household roles.

First I never said justifying violence. I mean just the words ring red flags unlike the word valuing hiearchies. Also "valuing power and control" over people seems to have its meaning in the words as being about abuse and violence which I never said was an acceptable belief norm or understanding for society.

But as far as a belief in control and power this is a normal and natural belief. Or as far as beliefs in hiearchies even valuing them as a explanation for mammal social organisation then theres nothing abusive in this.

Like I said earlier belief in rigid roles, control and power happen naturally in social settings. I gave the Military command hierarchy as an example of rigid roles, control and power between the different levels of command. A similar but less rigid but still based on fixed roles and levels of power and control for corporations.

Then I gave you the example of the new trend of Trad wives where the couple agree to play fairly set roles and control and even power according to modern Woke which would see any women in such a role unable to go out and get a career and get independent as being oppressed. So there are many examples of where beliefs in these things are a natural part of being human and structuring society.

Social groups across species rapidly self-organize into hierarchies, where members vary in their level of power, influence, skill, or dominance. In this review we explore the nature of social hierarchies and the traits associated with status in both humans and nonhuman primates, and how status varies across development in humans.

Our review finds that we can rapidly identify social status based on a wide range of cues. Like monkeys, we tend to use certain cues, like physical strength, to make status judgments, although layered on top of these more primitive perceptual cues are socio-cultural status cues like job titles and educational attainment.

Understanding Social Hierarchies: The Neural and Psychological Foundations of Status Perception

Social groups across species rapidly self-organize into hierarchies, where members vary in their level of power, influence, skill, or dominance. In this review we explore the nature of social hierarchies and the traits associated with status in both humans ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Again, "abusive" and "natural" are not necessarily mutually exclusive terms.

But how does this relate to the fact or address my point that the majority do hold the same base beliefs as abusers but don't abuse.

The majority of people may have a belief about hierarchies as part of nature or a natural part of how humans self organise as opposed to one that then takes this natural tendency and distorts it into something abusive.

Some people believe that a mother should stay with the child for the first few years while the father provides. But Woke society believes this is oppressive. Yet in reality the evidence shows that its actually the optimal thing you can do for your child. So who is the arbitor of what beliefs are the right one for society.

Thats why I say beliefs are too subjective to be the measure of abuse because people can have the same base belief and not abuse and in fact this base belief is usually a natural way to be for getting along. The only way we can ever sort out what beliefs are what is by the evidence of data and first hand experience on the ground, in the streets and understand what determinants are involved and try to reduce them.

I don't agree that "we" inherently believe in anything.

Well we certainly believe in our hierarchal economic system without even thinking about it when the bills come in lol. But then I guess when you higher up the levels that not so much a worry and therefore less worries and whatever priviledge goes with that.

Since I think a number of the premises underlying this claim are completely baseless, it follows that I find this claim completely baseless, as well.

Actually I'm simply asking the question. Its self-evident that there is something different between abusers and non abusers as far as recieving the same messages or influences and beliefs that cultivate abuse and violence but the majority don't abuse.

So I am simply asking what is that difference. It doesn't matter what premise and in fact I'm asking what is the premise that this could be based on. At the very least it establishes that there is a difference within between an abuser and non abuser that inclines them to believe in abuse compared to those who don't abuse.

Yes; with preventing the formation of the beliefs which result in abuse.

How do we do that, not that I don't know I am just wanting to understand what you think. How do we identify the beliefs and attitudes. I know as I said ealier what "valuing violence and control" means. If anyone had that belief theres no confusion, its clearly a negative belief if someone believes in controlling others and using violence against them.

But how else can we identify these 'wrong or negative beliefs'.

If beliefs don't result in abuse, then they're not of concern here, no matter how "unreal" anyone might think they are.

What if a current belief in society may contribute to negative belefs about abuse or violence and its accepted by policy as ok. How do we know or recognise this noting that the very nature of belief can delude people even entire societies to believe unreal ideas or perceptions of reality.

And what is rationality if not the faculty to think, to reason?

Yes and part of reasoning is critical thining which investigates things as to whether they are actually true or factual regardless of whether its about the objective evidence, the law or whatever the appropriate accepted norm may be.

If they don't do this and just rely on their own subjective determinations and truely believe that then this is irrational in that they could know the facts or the law or appropriate behaviour but their belief deluded them from wanting to know the truth and facts and even go there.

Whether or not that's true (I still think it's overstated, at best, as contributing to abusive behaviour), if they have the use of their faculties, and can choose to abuse or not, that's enough to make them culpable.

To a degree. Like I said the evidence shows that minds that are emotionally and psychologically distressed make rash and unrealistic choices because they are not percieving reality in a rational or balanced way. So their base for choices is not even the right sort of mind you would expect that could stop and think through whats really happening, self reflect, take ownership and make the right choice.

I used the example of an adolescents mind which is underdeveloped in the frontal cortex, the rational part of the brain and more developed in the limbic system, the emotional part. In some ways pschological distress acts this way on adults where the emotional aspect becomes dysregulated and heightened while the rational part is deminished due to distress especially anxiety. Like I said the majority of abusers are found to have anxiety disorders.

Sorry, no. We might run on ethical autopilot a lot of the time, but that doesn't mean change the fact that questions of good, bad, right, wrong, are ethical questions.

Actually I think you may be right in some ways. I mean we are conscious beings so we take in a lot and process it subconsciously. We map out our environments not just in dimensions but meaning. Meaning being more important to humans.

But I am not sure that survival instincts are about morality, those same survival instinct can be immoral but that doesn't matter as ethics don't come into it. If it allows the species to survive then thats all that really matters.

I just don't think a person is moralising about their behaviour of suddenly jumping out of the way from being hit by a car is about ethics. They jump out of the way as a natural reaction or reflex to fight or flight instinct.

 

[Paidiske]

I get this feeling that if I said the earth is sphere shaped and not flat you may say "Well, not necessarily" lol. Surely we can establish some things as 'necessarily so' through the evidence.

But you are claiming that someone who does something to create distress in others "must" already have such distress within themselves. And you've presented no evidence for that. To me it's as obvious as anything that we can prompt a range of reactions in others without that being our own mental and emotional state.

First I never said justifying violence.

You claimed a majority of people hold the beliefs which underpin abuse. Justification of violence is a key one of those.

So there are many examples of where beliefs in these things are a natural part of being human and structuring society.

I'd challenge the claim that any social structure is "natural."

But how does this relate to the fact or address my point that the majority do hold the same base beliefs as abusers but don't abuse.

Firstly, you've just spent a couple of paragraphs telling me that actually, they don't. But secondly, I asked you for evidence that the majority hold beliefs which accept violence, value hierarchy, power, control, and rigid roles, and you have still not given me any.

So who is the arbitor of what beliefs are the right one for society.

Provided we are not seeing harm done, can we not allow for diversity of views?

Thats why I say beliefs are too subjective to be the measure of abuse because people can have the same base belief and not abuse

Evidence still required...

The only way we can ever sort out what beliefs are what is by the evidence of data and first hand experience on the ground, in the streets and understand what determinants are involved and try to reduce them.

Which is exactly what I've been arguing for throughout this thread. That by the evidence of data and research, we know which beliefs underpin abuse, and that we can therefore challenge those beliefs.

Its self-evident that there is something different between abusers and non abusers as far as recieving the same messages or influences and beliefs that cultivate abuse and violence but the majority don't abuse.

Why do you think we all receive the same messages and influences? That is demonstrably false.

How do we do that, not that I don't know I am just wanting to understand what you think. How do we identify the beliefs and attitudes.

We conduct thorough and ongoing research amongst abusers and those who don't abuse, and identify which beliefs the abusers use to justify their abuse, and how those beliefs differ from the non-abusing cohort.

Yes and part of reasoning is critical thining which investigates things as to whether they are actually true or factual regardless of whether its about the objective evidence, the law or whatever the appropriate accepted norm may be.

Let's be real; most people don't investigate every single aspect of their lives all the time. Even when they do have the faculty of reason.

To a degree.

To enough of a degree that preventing abuse is about influencing the choices they make.

Actually I think you may be right in some ways.

Imagine that.

But I am not sure that survival instincts are about morality, those same survival instinct can be immoral but that doesn't matter as ethics don't come into it. If it allows the species to survive then thats all that really matters.

A consequentialist argument. But I disagree; there are times when rising above our survival instincts is the only ethical thing to do, and people make those choices, too.