Taking Children Seriously
No content on this page itself — see linked references below.
2 linked references
May 23rd, 2025
- not sure if Lulie Tanett or David Deutsch would agree with this quote, but it feels fairly representative to me
- > Disagreements always indicate at least one person has made at least one small mistake. Therefore, approaching them rationally — in a way capable of correcting mistakes — is crucial.
One mistake parents sometimes make is to assume that because their argument or explanation is compelling and complete, then there's no reason for the child not to accept it, and therefore the only conclusion left is malice. My child won't listen because he's selfish, greedy, hateful, spiteful, sinful, stupid, childish, immature, wants to be difficult, or something like that. This attitude leads to a bad parent-child relationship; prevents parents from improving their communication and truth seeking skill; prevents parents from looking into issues in enough depth to find mistakes they may have made; and pressures the child to defer to authority (the parent starts threatening punishments for non-compliance since the conversation is at an end), rather than helping him learn to think and judge for himself.- doesn't exactly disagree with Seeing Deeper Truths Together (talk), but sort of
- if we let the word "disagreements" refer only to matters of fact, then this is sort of true
- but
- A) in practice they often also refer to REAL conflicts, which I don't see how TCS addresses. like if one person wants something and one person wants another...
- like "common preferences" has this omniwin vibe
- but sometimes the TRUE answer is that you don't wanna deal with each other! but that option is kind of off the table for parents+kids
- at least on some scales
- B) your perspectives don't just come from rational arguments, but from your experiences! given that,
- quote from William Godwin, Mary Shelley’s father, one of the philosophers that TCS was based on
- > "The right of the parent over his offspring lies either in his superior strength, or his superior reason. If in his strength, we have only to apply this right universally to drive morality out of the world. If in his reason, in that reason let him confide. It is a poor argument of my superior reason that I am unable to make justice be apprehended and felt, in the most necessary cases, without the intervention of blows."
- > "Let us consider the effect that coercion produces upon the mind of him against whom it is employed. It cannot begin with convincing; it is no argument. It begins with producing the sensation of pain, and the sentiment of distaste. It begins with violently alienating the mind from the truth with which we wish it to be impressed. It includes in it a tacit confession of imbecility. If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak."
- LT > "non-coercion is not so much an answer as a critique"
- like our current best forms of government have coercion. we legit don't have a better option available
- but I we can note that the presence of coercion in the current option is a problem that it has, that we'd like to resolve without losing things we care about