The Dynamics of Persuasion
Before presenting his noble lie Socrates sets out three ways in which men are unwillingly deprived of true opinions: theft, force, and sorcery.
Plat. Rep. 3.413
Note here the asymmetrical dynamics of the interactions Socrates has in mind. Men are able to use argument in order to strip each other unawares of their belief. Speech can infiltrate the soul and exfiltrate with ones true opinions. Logos is a type of force which a speaker can wield in order to become the agent of a listeners persuasion.
It reminds one of (and might even be an allusion to) Gorgias and his Encomium of Helen, where we see this force in one particular argument. Helen of Troy was not to be blamed for the Trojan war because the words made her do it. Discourse was like ??????, working upon the soul like a drug worked upon the body. For Gorgias, persuasion by speech is equivalent to abduction by force. One might think of this as no more than cheeky sophistry, something an ancient and superstitious crowd might come to believe. But the genealogy of some modern lingo reveals a similar implication today.
We suggest through a class of concepts that a human being can animate another human being with words, as if by sorcery. Speakers can incite an emotion or activity in a crowd. They can foment violence or revolution. They can stoke up some unwanted emotion. They can stir others to lawless action or crime. They agitate; they goad; they inspire.
This, in combination with the grammar and typology of the language, and the relative proximity in space and time between speakers and listeners, suggests a sort of action at a distance.
When used these verbs are invariably transitive, requiring an object on which to transfer the activity (compare Socrates incited to Socrates incited the youth). The direct object is invariably some living creature, usually a listener or listeners. But the subject need not be an agent, nor capable of acting at all. The subject could be an inanimate and passive object such as a book or painting.
The etymology of these words and the genealogy of these concepts often reveal a literal and practical origin, but then take on a figurative and rhetorical sense. Inspire, for example, can be traced back to the Latin inspirare, meaning to breathe or blow into (the literal sense). But the earliest English examples establish the words religious and figurative nature, to influence, move, or guide (as to speech or action) through divine or supernatural agency or power (the figurative sense). Literally, a goad was a stick to poke cattle. To incite was to put into rapid motion. The sense is altered from the literal to the figurative when we trade the implicit kinetic force in the one with an unexplained and undefined force in the other, as we do in contemporary usage.
Influence is another odd term with a supernatural and superstitious pedigree, but as far as I can tell it lacks a literal sense. As a noun, it once denoted streaming ethereal power from the stars when in certain positions, acting upon character or destiny of men. Its verb form grew out of its noun form, but no less retained its action at a distance and the etherial nature of its force.
In the literal sense of these terms we are able to trace the causes and effects from one thing to another, and witness how through kinetic energy a human can affect another human being. In the figurative sense we are unable to provide any chain of cause and effect, and we are left to imagine sorcery and magic acting upon souls and spirits.
We ought to doubt the magical idea at the outset because the physics, biology, and consistency of it is wanting. Though the use, definition, and belief suggests that some combinations of words affect human biology in such a way as to animate it to this or that action, like magic, it has no such effect on any other phase of matter or species of biology. The actual physical and biological effects, such as a sound vibration hitting the cochlea and its subsequent movements throughout the anatomy, do not match the presumed effects, like the incitement of a behavior or emotion. Moreover, the presumed effects vary wildly according to who listens to the words and rarely (if ever) according to what is said.
None of this would be a problem if the idea wasnt used as the justification for violence, censorship, and authoritarian policy. Speakers are blamed for the actions of others, as much now as in the days of Gorgias and Plato. But might the asymmetry of these dynamics be misleading? Might it be the case that the listener has much more to say about his true opinions than the speaker ever could, and in the end, the listener is the agent of his own persuasion?
by those who have their opinions stolen from them I mean those who are over-persuaded and those who forget, because in the one case time, in the other argument strips them unawares of their beliefs. Now I presume you understand, do you not?
Yes.
Well, then, by those who are constrained or forced I mean those whom some pain or suffering compels to change their minds.
That too I understand and you are right.
And the victims of sorcery I am sure you too would say are they who alter their opinions under the spell of pleasure or terrified by some fear.
Yes, he said: everything that deceives appears to cast a spell upon the mind.
Plat. Rep. 3.413
Note here the asymmetrical dynamics of the interactions Socrates has in mind. Men are able to use argument in order to strip each other unawares of their belief. Speech can infiltrate the soul and exfiltrate with ones true opinions. Logos is a type of force which a speaker can wield in order to become the agent of a listeners persuasion.
It reminds one of (and might even be an allusion to) Gorgias and his Encomium of Helen, where we see this force in one particular argument. Helen of Troy was not to be blamed for the Trojan war because the words made her do it. Discourse was like ??????, working upon the soul like a drug worked upon the body. For Gorgias, persuasion by speech is equivalent to abduction by force. One might think of this as no more than cheeky sophistry, something an ancient and superstitious crowd might come to believe. But the genealogy of some modern lingo reveals a similar implication today.
We suggest through a class of concepts that a human being can animate another human being with words, as if by sorcery. Speakers can incite an emotion or activity in a crowd. They can foment violence or revolution. They can stoke up some unwanted emotion. They can stir others to lawless action or crime. They agitate; they goad; they inspire.
This, in combination with the grammar and typology of the language, and the relative proximity in space and time between speakers and listeners, suggests a sort of action at a distance.
When used these verbs are invariably transitive, requiring an object on which to transfer the activity (compare Socrates incited to Socrates incited the youth). The direct object is invariably some living creature, usually a listener or listeners. But the subject need not be an agent, nor capable of acting at all. The subject could be an inanimate and passive object such as a book or painting.
The etymology of these words and the genealogy of these concepts often reveal a literal and practical origin, but then take on a figurative and rhetorical sense. Inspire, for example, can be traced back to the Latin inspirare, meaning to breathe or blow into (the literal sense). But the earliest English examples establish the words religious and figurative nature, to influence, move, or guide (as to speech or action) through divine or supernatural agency or power (the figurative sense). Literally, a goad was a stick to poke cattle. To incite was to put into rapid motion. The sense is altered from the literal to the figurative when we trade the implicit kinetic force in the one with an unexplained and undefined force in the other, as we do in contemporary usage.
Influence is another odd term with a supernatural and superstitious pedigree, but as far as I can tell it lacks a literal sense. As a noun, it once denoted streaming ethereal power from the stars when in certain positions, acting upon character or destiny of men. Its verb form grew out of its noun form, but no less retained its action at a distance and the etherial nature of its force.
In the literal sense of these terms we are able to trace the causes and effects from one thing to another, and witness how through kinetic energy a human can affect another human being. In the figurative sense we are unable to provide any chain of cause and effect, and we are left to imagine sorcery and magic acting upon souls and spirits.
We ought to doubt the magical idea at the outset because the physics, biology, and consistency of it is wanting. Though the use, definition, and belief suggests that some combinations of words affect human biology in such a way as to animate it to this or that action, like magic, it has no such effect on any other phase of matter or species of biology. The actual physical and biological effects, such as a sound vibration hitting the cochlea and its subsequent movements throughout the anatomy, do not match the presumed effects, like the incitement of a behavior or emotion. Moreover, the presumed effects vary wildly according to who listens to the words and rarely (if ever) according to what is said.
None of this would be a problem if the idea wasnt used as the justification for violence, censorship, and authoritarian policy. Speakers are blamed for the actions of others, as much now as in the days of Gorgias and Plato. But might the asymmetry of these dynamics be misleading? Might it be the case that the listener has much more to say about his true opinions than the speaker ever could, and in the end, the listener is the agent of his own persuasion?
Comments (72)
Nuh uh, like every other word you see in an English text, it comes from Old French inspirer.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspire
You dont think the word inspire can be traced back to the Latin word inspirare?
That's the gist of it.
In my view, rhetoric in general promotes the magical idea, that speakers are like sorcerers, and I think this underlying beliefs is one of the distinctions between the sophist and the philosopher. Besides having little evidence to support the magical idea, I think it proves disastrous insofar as it robs the listener of agency and justifies a tyranny.
I don't argue for unconstrained speechI believe in mannersonly that the words are wholly innocent and need not be made out to be something they are not. We need not fear them or pretend that they will push us around should we hear or read them. We need not believe they possess powers and forces they do not. To do so is to weaken people, to relegate them to status of a slave, where the truth is that people have the force and the power to be the agent of their own persuasion.
I make the correction everytime I see the mistake. I know that Old French enspirer comes from Ancient Latin inspirare (skipping a few steps in the evolution), because French is Latin. What you say however is a fallacy that I have addressed here and here.
Quoting NOS4A2
I know that it comes from French. The statement that an English word comes from Latin is in most cases comedic, as English has nothing to do with Latin. How could it?
I neither asked nor said that it came from Latin. I said that it can be traced to latin. You said "Nuh uh". But the etymology proves unequivocally that it can. There is no point in quibbling about it.
Are you using words or making them? You use your mouth or fingers to create them, certainly, but beyond that this is where your relationship with them ends. And like any other sound or mark that you may make the words fall wherever they may, whether to dissipate in the wind or collect dust. You put your instruction into the world and that's the end of it.
Rather, the reader uses them. He comes upon them, examines them, understands them, and provides them with some semblance of meaning to suit his own purposes. Or, like Polemarchus, he can just refuse to listen. This important interaction is completely beyond your power and control.
There is nothing persuasive about your argument.
I agree that English has nothing to do with Latin. It's a Germanic, not a Roman[tic] language. The French contributions to English vocabulary didn't change English grammar.
That is a common talking point. However, it is wrong, and French did impact English's grammar in several indirect ways, and quite a few direct ways.
Quoting BC
That is fine, persuasion is subjective, evidence is objective, my argument is that English words don't come from Latin, that is what I proved.
Quoting BC
Eh.
An argument against the power of words uses words to make the case for the proposition,
Why blame me and not your words? Perhaps because you realize you are not the agent of persuasion in the formation and defense of mine or any one elses beliefs. Given the underlying premise about the power and efficacy of words of sophistry in particular and rhetoric in general, you can either admit that the powers of your own words are weak and lacking, or you can afford me some sort of agency in the governing of my own beliefs. It would be better for both of us if it were the latter, and we can use each other's ideas instead of having them use us. The latter seems more conducive to philosophy and human nature.
At any rate, Im open to any way of describing persuasion that does not evoke action at a distance and includes me as an agent of my own persuasion. Perhaps we can come up with one.
If there is an asymmetry it is between someone who speaks persuasively about things that are not true and someone who is persuaded by false speech.
An early issue in the Republic is the ability to "make the weaker argument stronger". The stock-in trade of the sophist. Someone who is able to critically evaluate the argument will not be persuaded. Gorgias' words held not power over Socrates. The power of words is no match for the power of reason. But Gorgias was able to demonstrate that he had the power to part a fool and his money.
The power of the words [edit] comes from believing them to be true.
Quoting NOS4A2
It is not that they are unaware of their beliefs. It is that they are unaware that their belief or opinions are being taken from them. Two reliable translations:
Horan "... takes something from them without their noticing"
Bloom "... takes away their opinions unawares."
Influence. I wrote about this word and detailed its etymology. Im trying to avoid the use of it because the sense of its definition is figurative and supernatural. If I were to ask What do you mean when you say the speaker influences everything that follows? You would have to trade influence with some other figurative synonym and the whole ordeal becomes circular.
Its not that I dont enjoy your figurative language, its just that I want to describe the interaction in a more literal fashion, without the use of the magical idea I expressed earlier. Then and only then can we dispel the myth of the efficacy of words.
No, everyone is responsible for what they say, its just that what they say is without the efficacy and power we often make them out to be, and therefor what they say never requires a disproportionate response like censorship.
Believing is the power of a believer, not words.
I never said they were unawares of their beliefs. I said Men are able to use argument in order to strip each other unawares of their belief. I used the translation of Paul Shorey, which appears in the quote.
You point to what you believe to be:
Quoting NOS4A2
but do not understand what it is he has in mind. The founder of the noble lie does not believe his own lie. His power is not in his believing but in having others believing his story. The power lies in the story being persuasive, in the words being believed.
Quoting NOS4A2
It is a point of clarification. What you said is clear in so far as the words are there to be read, but given the syntax and use of quotation marks how those words might be understood is not so clear.
What we should not be unaware of is your belief that:
Quoting NOS4A2
Have you stolen that belief from yourself? On the one hand, you claim that the words are not important, that what is important is that the reader provides them with meaning. But on the other, it is not the meaning the reader gives to them but the words themselves, what you said, that is important.
By the way, there is good reason why the Loeb Classic Library replaced Shorey's translations of Plato.
Im not so sure of that. At any rate, I was only pointing out the arguments Socrates was making, and they were wholly unpersuasive.
Ive never said words are not important. I love words. I dont want to see any of them censored or banned or treated like anything other than what they are. Im fact, my whole stance is a defense of words against those who seek to take them from us, or criminalize their use. Rather, Ive only claimed words do not have the power people often ascribe to them.
If you care to understand it and are not just mining for statements that seem to support your claims, then you would do well to start by acknowledging that you do not understand.
Quoting NOS4A2
So you do not find what you do not understand persuasive?!
Quoting NOS4A2
What you have said on several occasions is:
You quoted me but did not address the bolded statement:
It is your belief that the reader provides words with "some semblance of meaning", but when the reader (in this case me) provides those words with meaning you, you point to your words, to what you said, as if the words have a particular meaning established by the words themselves.
The argument is self-defeating. You use words in an attempt to persuade the reader that words are not persuasive. You put it in the form of a question:
Quoting NOS4A2
The answer to that question is no. You have not persuaded me. And based on what others have said, you have not persuaded others either. Your argument is weak and incapable of persuading anyone who is able to evaluate it rationally.
This is just your latest and most likely not your last attempt to separate Trump from his responsibility for what he says.
I understand your claim Im just not sure I agree with it.
I did not find Socrates arguments persuasive. Whats not to understand?
Sure, that is also important. But I never said nor believe words were not important, and one should not assume, wrongly, that because words have no power that they are unimportant or that anyone is arguing such a thing.
No Im only clarifying what I was trying to get at by using those words. That you come up with a different meaning than me only makes the case more clear. No meaning is conveyed from point A to point B.
Just more evidence that you are the agent of your own persuasion. You decide and no one else does. You believe what you want to. No amount of rhetoric
can change it. But that you have to resort to sophistry to defend it is enough to persuade me that you do not really believe in anything like truth or justice, but in self-preservation, self-adulation, and self-seeking.
You do not know Plato well enough to know that nothing in the dialogue supports your claims.
Quoting NOS4A2
Again you skip over the issue - words have meaning. It is evident that words are important to you - as a form of auditory autoeroticism. You get off on hearing yourself talk.
Quoting NOS4A2
If words do not have meaning then how can you expect to clarify what you are trying to say by using them?
If words do not have meaning then the sounds and symbols used are not important. They can be replaced arbitrarily by any other sounds and symbols.
Quoting NOS4A2
You have it backwards. It is exactly the opposite. I am the agent of my own ability to guard against being persuaded by false arguments. In the passage you cited from the Republic, those who are to become guardians must be guarded against false arguments while they are young and do not yet have the agency to guard themselves. They will eventually become agents who guard against others having their true opinions taken away from them.
Quoting NOS4A2
Perhaps no one can change that you believes what you want, but certainly rhetoric can change what it is one wants to believe. It can persuade someone to want to believe that instead of this because that seems to be true and this does not.
Do you understand what Aristotle meant when he said that rhetoric is the counterpart to dialectic? Although it can be used to steal away true opinion, it can also be used to secure true opinion. The noble lie is a good example of the latter.
I never claimed it supported any of my claims. I merely used the quote as an example.
The issue is what I wrote about in the OP. You havent touched anything Ive claimed, Im afraid.
Thats up to you. I assume you can read and that you have enough understanding and experience to supply the text you see here with some sort of meaning. I can only clarify what I mean as much as I can. The rest is up to you, but a little good faith might be in order.
Like I said, Socrates arguments are unconvincing. So of course I have an opposing view. In my opinion the value of the work is not in its arguments and the resulting doctrines, but that it invites me to assess the arguments given and come to my own conclusions. The acquiescence of a budding tyrant like Glaucon ought to prompt a discerning reader to raise objections.
Rhetoric can displace the air outside of the mouth, propel waves of sound, and can mark a medium such as paper. It cannot change a human being in such a way as to lead him to want this or that. Thats a simple matter of physics and biology. It cannot steal nor secure anything.
The continuous and circular metaphorical descriptions of persuasion only serves to belie its own premise of forceful discourse and the supposed efficacy of words.
Causality doesn't apply well to human thought. As you've pointed out, humans are different from one another. An event's effect on people's thinking isn't consistent.
Other events can effect, influence or inspire people, such as music, art, a tragic loss or war, and the impact will also differ by person. A person's upbringing "influences" them by shaping who they become, one's experiences "influence" them by shaping who they are and how they see the world.
Words don't cause influence, they don't cause inspiration, but people can be inspired or influenced by words. If you consider another's argument, and choose to agree with it, you've still been influenced by them and their argument. Your perspective has changed in a way that mightn't have happened without that person to give that argument.
Even if you're the one to decide, if all words did were force you to make a decision, that would be a substantial influence on you. If all words did was introduce you to a new idea or presented a new way of thinking about an old idea, that could possibly lead to you changing your mind.
If one is just pragmatic, and leaves arbitrary bullshit at the door, can an effective orator incite a crowd to violence and create a violent situation which wouldn't have otherwise occurred? Yes. Should we make it illegal to incite violence to prevent such situations? Yes.
Easy, there's nothing else to say.
You have been extended far more than a little good faith! But no matter how often I point out the contradictions you either cannot see them or refuse to acknowledge them. You deny that words have meaning and yet claim that there is something you mean that you are clarifying with words.
Quoting NOS4A2
By raising objections you are doing just what it is the guardians of one's soul must do! You are more in agreement than you know.
Why raise objections if words are nothing more than sounds and marks? Why use some sounds and marks to argue against the sounds and marks of others? The reason is because words are not just sounds and marks. The acquiescence of a budding tyrant like Glaucon has consequences. He is prompted to act, just as you are when you object. Despite your denial you admit the:
Quoting NOS4A2
For Aristotle, recognizing the harm that words can do requires looking at their possible benefits:
The matter of the "listener being the agent of his own persuasion" requires access to a shared world of true events and values for the concept of harm to have meaning. Otherwise, the "listener" is floating in a nihilistic sea of pure self-reference.
The word Influence and its various synonyms are words Im going to try and avoid from here on out, if such a feat is possible. Perhaps if we recognize their figurative and metaphorical upbringing, we can avoid the pitfalls, but otherwise we reduce ourselves to magical thinking by using them. This is because, as verbs, they do not refer to any literal act of any thing, and worse, people confuse themselves upon reading them. We maintain a false grammar with their use. Through the application of this false grammar people have made of words subjects and people objects, where the exact opposite is the case. They can come to believe prose acts upon a reader instead of the other way about.
But refusing to use them is difficult, only possible through a sheer act of will. Note your own application: Words don't cause influence, they don't cause inspiration, but people can be inspired or influenced by words. This to me is a distinction without a difference. If we step out of the passive voice and into the active, it would be Words can inspire or influence people. The words on a page become a subject, while the reader is relegated to the status of a passive object. Perhaps the middle voice in Ancient Greek, and the absence of it in many languages, leads to this sort of conundrum.
So no, an orator cannot incite a crowd to violence and create a violent situation with words. Its physically and biologically impossible. We can try it as an experiment. Incite me to violence or hatred or any other species of act or emotion. Through your words, inspire, goad, persuade, fuel, instigate, provoke, excite, foment, instigate, exhort, agitate, some sort action or emotion. I wager well find that I am the agent of such acts and emotions.
Perhaps you can demonstrate. Inflict upon me the greatest injury by using your words.
Your contradictions are not in fact contradictions. The fact that I deny words have meaning does not contradict that I mean something by using them. Can you notice the difference? The words meaning something vs. I meaning something? I have been saying all along that I engage in meaning, that I provide meaning to those symbols. So it appears you are struggling to put together the most basic of logic.
I am raising objections to the treatment of words as supernatural objects. It's true, I read the words and wanted to write something about them. But none of this insinuates that the words made me do it. Though we may make a text and a reader the subject and object respectively, the grammar cannot alter the physics and biology of the interaction. The dynamics of persuasion has it backwards and a belief in it only leads to censorship, violence, and tyranny.
From the safety of your nihilistic premises, you can neither be harmed nor helped.
There is always an excuse.
You could not mean something by using them if the words did not have meaning. Your meaning something by using them means that they are not just random, meaningless sounds and marks.
Quoting NOS4A2
Words are not meaningless symbols that become meaningful when you provide meaning to them. And words are not meaningless symbols that become meaningful when we the reader provides meaning to them, as you also claim. If that were the case then when you say "A" you might mean 'X' while one reader might provide the meaning 'not X' and still another reader 'neither X nor not X'. Language would be impossible.
Quoting NOS4A2
You are objecting to a problem of your own making. It is by separating words and meaning that it appears to you that words must be supernatural objects if they are to have force. You limit the meaning of the word 'force' to physics and biology and wrongly conclude that if words were to have force it would be action at a distance.
Quoting NOS4A2
Your wanting to write something about them is part of what it means for words to have force.
Quoting NOS4A2
And yet you did respond. A drop of water has force. A torrent of water has force. But the force of one is not the same as the force of the other. You can resist the force of words, but that does not mean that they cannot be forceful.
The point I made is that you are asking for me to 'do my worse' as a matter of debate where the wrong argument is made to seem to be the true one. Plato and Aristotle both relegate that practice to be sophistical diversions.
You brought up the possible harm words can do. Against what measure of benefit is your claim made against? Your response dodges that question.
They are not random words. I create them and organize them at my own discretion. But the sounds and marks themselves are without meaning. One simply cannot look at a symbol and find meaning in it, and there lost languages to prove this. The reason someone cannot decipher the meaning of a lost language is precisely because there is no meaning in the words.
Thats not the case. The meaning of A is not the same as the word A. Refer to a dictionary. Word on one side, definition on the other.
And one can literally mean anything by using any word he wants, such as in cryptography, or by using any number of figures of speech like double entendres, innuendo, allusion, homophones, synecdoches.
Words don't have any force or energy or anything, so I see no problem refusing that silly metaphor, and the justification for censorship and violence that arise from it. I am open to any characterization that doesn't utilize action at a distance and magical thinking to describe speaking and listening. We need not pretend that meaning is sitting in the text, or that it is riding on a sound wave, only to jump into the soul when it finds an eye or ear, only to animate a listener or reader to this or that action. So perhaps we can work on revising this ancient superstition.
Can you describe this force and how it works?
If you can injure someone with words, why wouldn't you demonstrate it? Because it's tantamount to sorcery.
You do not "create" words. You make use of words, most of which have been around long before you. Whatever discretion you use in organizing them follows rules of syntax that have also been around much longer than you have.
Quoting NOS4A2
We have been over this before. Words get their meaning from within a shared language such as English, which you did not "create" By ignoring this you end up hopelessly confused and wanting to drag others down with you.
You remain so self-assured while every response has been so disparaging of your views... Free thinker? Or just as stubborn as a goat?
Quoting NOS4A2
I'll be impressed if you manage to convince even a single person that they should try to avoid using verbs that don't refer to a literal act. This is basic English you're arguing against.
Quoting NOS4A2
"The reader is relegated to the status of a passive object", language isn't that impractical. For words to inspire, clearly, the reader needs to be inspired, it's a pre-requisite.
Quoting NOS4A2
How impractical and obtuse. To incite a crowd to violence requires the crowd to be incited, indeed, if you refuse to be incited then the orator cannot incite you. To be an accomplice in my crime, you need to agree to assist me.
If an orator incites you to violence, and you are incited and act violently, then you were incited. Yes, you acted of your own free will, but you were still incited, because that's English. Is your only criticism a concern that people are being treated like passive objects?
I'll let you know if a disparaging view ever makes sense. Until then the over-use of figurative language to describe states of affairs is inadequate and superstitious.
I wouldn't. Knowing that descriptions of these interactions are metaphorical, not to be taken literally, ought to be enough. Unfortunately sometimes it isn't.
The question is who or what inspires him. Your own suggestion puts words as the agent of inspiration, capable of animating the reader. That's magical thinking. It's sorcery. The point is to try and avoid magical thinking, to describe the interaction literally and accurately.
I'll leave the question begging to the side, for now, because it stands on its own as a good example.
Here's another English word: "figurative". And the English etymology of the term "incite" displays its figurative upbringing.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/incite
In other words, you use figurative language and magical thinking to describe a literal crime. To do so suggests that an orator or his words are somehow responsible for a listener's activity. To do so furthers the belief in oneself and one's children that words have some sort of efficacy over other human beings, resulting in bullying and a general weakness and fear towards language and words.
My concern is what I wrote in the opening post, that these words are used to justify censorship and tyranny.
Quoting NOS4A2
To give some other examples "That sight terrifies me" - Are we saying the sight is responsible for terrifying me, and I'm just the thing "being terrified"? "This fantastic weather makes me want to go surfing" - Is the weather manipulating/influencing me to go surfing? Like I have no say in the matter? Genuine questions, your arguments are that foolish.
What terrifies you may not terrify me. The difference is not in the sight, but in he who beholds it. The question is not "why is that sight terrifying", but "why are you terrified it"? The answer ought to be personal because you are responsible for being terrified of it.
If someone holds a gun to your head and threatens to kill you, what if anything is terrifying you? Would it be the same if you knew it was a toy water pistol?
I will repeat your question:
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting NOS4A2
This is easy for you to say since no one is holding a gun to your head. It may be that different people will react differently, but that is only part of the dynamic. You are not responsible for the fact that someone is holding a gun to your head.
The consequences of having a gun pointed at your head could be fatal. Of course one would be terrified, at least if he knew what a gun was. You are responsible for being terrified at someone holding a gun to your head.
So, the bank teller and not the bank robber should be held responsible for the money being stolen at gunpoint since the bank teller handed over the money.
Those who are terrified and not the terrorists are responsible for doing what the terrorists demand at gunpoint.
If he didnt hand over the money, is that the responsibility of the robber? Maybe he just wasnt good enough at frightening people?
The teller handed over the money because the robber had a gun to his head. Most would have done so, and thats why people are advised to comply with robbers. Thats why we forgive him and the gunman is guilty
He can frighten them but they are responsible for being frightened?
Quoting NOS4A2
Right, the robber with a gun frightened the teller. The teller did not frighten herself. She is not responsible for being terrified.
The teller is the one who becomes frightened, or calm, or whatever the case may be. What she is frightened at, or terrified of, is the robber and the potential harm that may come to her. Would you say the gunman is responsible for the teller remaining calm should she remain calm?
No.
Right. He is responsible for holding a gun to her head. He is responsible for frightening her.
Quoting NOS4A2
I would say that he failed to do what he set out to accomplish.
So he is responsible for making her calm?
I don't know how you could draw that conclusion, but it is indicative of the futility of trying to have a deliberative reasoned discussion with you.
Im drawing the opposite conclusion: that the teller is responsible for her emotions. Im trying to understand why you think the robber is responsible for her emotions, but you get all pissy and evade. Oh well.
Quoting NOS4A2
Sure, but that wasn't my question. The point is that nobody is claiming that the "sight" is the "agent of fear" capable of instilling fear into the viewer of the sight.
Why not just apply what you've said here to words on a page? "What inspires you may not inspire me. The difference is not in the words, but in he who reads them. The question is not 'why are these words inspiring', but 'why are you inspired by them'?"
Quoting NOS4A2
One thing at a time, I'm dealing with this "magical" element you keep referring to. If you agree that there's nothing magical about sights terrifying or words inspiring, then we can move onto your next point.
I am confused by this interchange. Is your claim that words cannot play a causal role in people's actions or that this would amount to magic?
The assertion that a person pointing a gun at another person and threatening them plays no causal role in their state of mind or actions would be bizarre. Does sense perception [I]ever[/I] play a determining role in behavior or belief? If so, why are threats or words different? If not, how does this not entail that communication is impossible, the external world irrelevant, and solipsism?
How do you explain cars stopping at red lights if what is communicated by the red light cannot play a determining role in their behavior? But if sense perception can determine behavior, and words are experienced through sense perception, I fail to see what the difference is.
In particular, here the confusion seems to come from the idea that if a threat has not [I]totally[/I] determined the threatened's actions and state of mind, it cannot play [I]any[/I] role in determining their actions and state of mind.
A counterfactual analysis might be helpful here. Would the bank teller have been afraid and given the robber the money if the robber had not threatened them and demanded the money?
Why is censorship bad? If words cannot be responsible for how anyone acts or how they feel, then what does censorship change about the world? How does censorship even work? If the state says, "do not speak about the merits of communism or we will shoot you," according to your claims, it is solely the threatened populace who is [I]responsible[/i] for any actions or feelings vis-á-vis these threats. If the bank robber isn't responsible for the bank teller's fear or for their handing the money over to them, then I hardly see how the state's censorship efforts could be responsible for people not talking or writing about banned subjects.
It would seem your claims about the inefficacious nature of language, and communication more generally, along with your claims about were responsibility rests for actions, undermine your claims re censorship.
Yes, words cannot animate other human beings, and to believe they can is magical thinking.
All causes, responses, motivating factors, knowledge and understanding regarding guns and red lights and words, and how to react to them and why, lie within a unique point in space and timein the agent. Absolutely none of it exists in guns and red lights and words. Agency belongs to agents, is the main point, which should not be a controversial statement, but when it comes to words it is.
The agent (the driver), not the light, determines whether a car stops at a light (or not). The driver operates the brake. The light is designed to indicate when it is appropriate to stop and go, it wasnt designed to stop cars. One just needs to assume the agency in the appropriate spot in order to avoid the magical thinking.
Yes, one considers the nature of any threat or circumstance and how to respond. Im not saying the environment has no role to play in ones decisions. One is situated within any given environment and tries to act according. I am only saying that the agent is the sole discretionary and causative force behind his own actions.
It depends on the kind of censorship, but wherever one is removing words from the world he is stealing from their creator in particular and from posterity in general, and violating a number of human rights while doing so. It is both a theft and a vandalism of a sort.
The censor removes words, or otherwise becomes incensed at other voices, because he thinks the words are effective. He sees them as dangerous or corrupting or the causal factor in anothers emotion. Thats why speakers ought to be punished and their words extirpated. Censors have little other argument for censorship, so I believe it undermines their position and not mine.
Oddly, this seems to show the opposite of what you intended. The symbols of an ancient language do have meaning even without knowing the language. We have no choice in recognizing the symbols as a language, for one thing, and depending on the context they could have much more meaning. For a symbol to be meaningless it would need to be completely unrecognizable as a symbol or anything else and not attract attention. Only then could it not affect us.
If agent's actions were actually determined by "nothing outside the agent," then it should be the case that agent's actions have no relation to the world. You seem to be engaged in a strange sort of variation of Ryle's Regress.
So, if someone spray paints "eat shit," across the front of your house and you paint over it, you are "stealing"?
Why is sharing words a human right? Not everything is a human right. Presumably, access to water is a human right because people suffer and die without water. The same is true for food, or being free from summary execution. But what would make the ability to share words a human right? Words, if they do nothing, seem completely irrelevant to human flourishing, so I can hardly see why we must have a right to them.
Further, since words cannot motivate action, and neither can threats, I still don't see how the state telling people not to speak about certain topics, or threatening them, can have any bearing on as to whether people speak about those topics. So, is censorship only bad when it erases words, but fine if it limits itself to telling people not to say certain things and threatening them?
Hell, even if the state shot someone over speaking, it would seem that, since the sole causative force behind actions can never lie outside the agent, the victim's falling to the ground afterwards could not be attributed to the state. Or perhaps this only applies to intentional actions? Even still, if that's the case, then the state torturing someone can never cause them to avoid speaking about certain things. This being the case, it's unclear if most forms censorship are even possible.
And, we certainly can't blame dictators for atrocities carried out by the states they run. After all, they only use words to ask that those atrocities be carried out, and such words cannot cause actions.
Nor can any blame be assigned to slander, deceit, or cheating. In this imagined polity, EJ Carroll can only defame herself. Her telling a person to stop could be a way for the attacker to hear go. Each will only hear the sound of one hand clapping. It would make Hobbe's state of nature look like a knitting club.
The agent can affect the world and be affected by the world by virtue of him being embedded within it. But the genesis of all his acts occur within him.
Its how we communicate with one another. We converse to survive, to mate, to live and to enjoy living. Its a necessary part of the human condition. But as mentioned censorship is a double violation. Not only do you deny the speakers right to speak but also everyone elses right to hear it.
We respond to threats because survival may depend on it. Evolution has gifted us the ability to fear threats, and rightfully so. So while the state is not responsible for my taking their threat seriously (or not), it is responsible for the threats, for letting us know it will punish us should it not like what we say, and any subsequent acts it makes towards those ends.
You may not see this as a problem until you end up burning at the stake. You can be forgiven for not speaking because someone threatened you, but the state cannot be forgiven for issuing these threats.
The rest about being shot and tortured does not apply because no one shoots or tortures another with words. Kinetic force is not in doubt here.
So the genesis begining of the process that ends up with the bank teller giving the robber the money begins with the teller, not the robber? This seems implausible on the face of it if the teller would never have given the robber the money but for being threatened.
According to your own statements this is impossible. The state can never be responsible for anything. With what arms does the state beat a protestor? How can a state tie anyone to a stake?
If all actions have their begining and end with the individual agent as you say, it is impossible for a state to be responsible for any such actions. Individual executioners might kill, but not states. Laws might mandate death, but they are words and thus cannot cause any human action. Thus, even if we allow that some forms of censorship are bad, laws mandating execution for speaking of certain things can only be neutral as they can never cause anyone to die. Plus, to preclude such laws from being proclaimed would itself be a form of censorship, which is never justifiable because words can never cause anything.
It doesn't seem that, by your reasoning, a state even [I]can[/I] issue threats. Only people issue threats, right? With what mouth would a state proclaim threats? With what hands might it write them?
Nor can states wage war. Only individuals wage war right? And all the causes of individuals waging war begin and end with the individual. Very strange then that they should all come to begin waging war at once though. One might wonder, from whence comes this coordination?
In any event, it seems we must allow that if the managers of any state want to pass a law proclaiming that all schools shall teach the supremacy of the Aryan race and the need to subjugate or destroy all other peoples, they should be allowed to do so. After all, such laws cannot cause anything to be taught or not taught by teachers, and to preclude such laws from being promulgated would be to "steal" them from their audience and posterity.
You might want to consider how sound waves propagate. As it stands, your reasoning seems absolutely riddled with contradictions.
Thats right, because the teller could also do otherwise. The teller could also not give the money, trip the alarm, run away, or perform any number of other acts. How does your chain of causation account for this if all subsequent actions are determined by the threat?
How does your chain of causation skip between human beings, even while they are from a distance from one another? Does the light bouncing from the weapon hit the retina, leading to a predetermined chain of causation throughout her biology until it ends in her handing over the money?
Your account sounds implausible on basic physical and biological grounds.
The state is composed of and run by individuals. So its not impossible. And those that censor according to law do so because they believe in the law and seek to enforce it. One can be confident that they will enforce it because they are employed to do so, not because the words and laws are running things in their brains.
And one neednt evoke action at a distance or magical thinking to account for this. No one needs to pretend that a law can force someone to abide by it simply because they read it. According to your reasoning, writing the law should be enough. So long as the law is dont fight each other well have world peace.
Why would you allow them to do so? Its such a weird non-sequitur. Of course any objection or dissent wouldnt matter according to your reasoning. Everyone would follow along because they received their instructions. The chain of causation has begun and the end is predetermined.
I did in the opening post. The actual physical and biological effects, such as a sound vibration hitting the cochlea and its subsequent movements throughout the anatomy, do not match the presumed effects, like the incitement of a behavior or emotion. Moreover, the presumed effects vary wildly according to who listens to the words and rarely (if ever) according to what is said.
Your account is chalked full of magical thinking, Im afraid. Its tantamount to sorcery. But given your special powers cant you just make me agree with the force of your words?
I personally think, that in your specific case, it may be best to leave you thinking so.
But how do they know what they are being employed to do without words and laws? How do they know what their job entails? It can't be because they read a law or were told something by a superior, right? Because if they do X because they think X is their job, and they only think that X is part of their job because of Y, a verbal communication, it's unclear to me how Y plays no causal role in their acts. It also seems strange that words can't cause human action while an abstract concept like employment can.
So how do people learn what their jobs entail or what their superiors want them to do?
Given your explanations, it still seems like only individuals, not states can be held responsible for actions. If the teller can have any response to being threatened, how is it not the case that citizens might have any response to a state decree? If state decrees cannot cause actions, how can states be responsible for citizens' actions?
The whole, "words cannot play a causal role in other's actions," bit would imply that most war criminals are completely innocent. After all, most high Soviet and Nazi officials never shot a single person. In general, they weren't even speaking to the people who actually carried out the atrocities. They told a subordinate, "liquidate all the Polish officers in the camps," and that person told someone else, who commanded a fourth person to carry out the executions.
If words have no causal force though, how is the initiator of the mass executions responsible? It would seem that if words are, as you say, inefficacious, then Hitler, who never killed a single Jew with his own hands, must be absolved of responsibility for the Holocaust.
Likewise, fraud cannot be a crime. Fraud and deception involve getting people to do things they would not have done otherwise but for your words. But fraud seems quite impossible in most of its forms. How does a fraudster cause a senior to send them money by posing as a family member in distress? They can't, their only contact with the victim is via causally inefficacious words sent over a phone!
Would you agree that sound waves propagate deterministically such that one part in the process can be said to cause later ones?
Does the skin of the ear drum vibrate deterministically in accordance with the laws of classical physics that predict the behavior of classical scale objects?
But if these all function deterministically, with a clear causal chain, where in "the brain," does determinism stop? If it doesn't stop, if the brain responds deterministically like the rest of the physical world, if it is not a sui generis substance, then it would seem that causal chains can absolutely be traced from sound waves to actions.
That you think this is impossible, that the same physical input can lead to myriad outputs vis-á-vis the brain, would seem to be the magical thinking here. If the causes determining acts in the brain only begin with the individual, then it seems we have a sui generis causal power attached to brains that exists nowhere else in nature (and which has yet to be observed in brains either).
Further, the genesis of human action, if it springs into existence inside the brain with no reference to prior physical states, would seem to eliminate the possibility of free will. After all, if the genesis of human action is determined by nothing that exists prior to that genesis, then it can have nothing to do with who we are, our memories, preferences, desires, etc., since those pre-exist our actions.
People communicate with each other. If youve learned a language you can understand the language and words coming out of someones mouth. What causes you to hear words? the words or your ears? What causes you to understand the language, a lifetime of learning and understanding the language or the words?
There is definitely a dilemma there. But I think it's the other way about. Many war criminals have used your defense, for instance at the Nuremberg trials, that they were just following orders. They werent partners to the crime, they were subordinate to the words of another, and therefor innocent. Your doctrine implies people can get away with war crimes, and in fact it was used as such a defense numerous times.
You could just say the superiors were guilty for what they had done, which was ordering the liquidation of all Polish officers at the camp. Im not sure the fact they didnt pull the trigger makes the organization of mass murder any less of a crime.
Yes.
it does, as far as I know.
Not sui generis, but causa sui. Once the soundwave hits the ear the chain is over. That's when the biology takes over. Whatever energy is left over is fully under the direction and operation of the biology, and the biology is the sole determining factor in the entire interaction. The energy doesn't direct the body, or determine its motions; the body directs the energy, determines what happens to it. The body converts the wave into mechanical energy, eventually transducing them into electrical energy, and so on. The structures, the processes, the movements, the manipulation of the energy into various forms, are causa sui, all fully determined by the body and nothing besides. The biology and the scope of its operations has been fine-tuned to perform these tasks over millions of years of evolution. We can't just throw it aside and say it provides no determining factor in the lifespan of a soundwave.
The opposite is the case. If an action is self-caused it would eliminate the possibility of determinism because the genesis of an action cannot be shown to begin elsewhere.
I have not expressed a "doctrine." I have expressed what follows from your claim that "words cannot cause people to act."
This is not an either/or distinction, either the person who pulls the trigger is responsible for the executions OR the person who ordered them is. You can have an account where both are culpable and culpable in varrying degrees, and such an account seems eminently reasonable here. We should not be forced into claiming that either Hitler is a war criminal or the SS officer who butchered Jewish civilians is, but not both. Both can be war criminals in virtue of the same atrocity, just as no individual player/coach is ever responsible for winning a basketball game.
But in virtue of what is giving an order a crime? If giving verbal commands can never cause someone else to carry out an execution, because verbal commands can never cause anyone to carry out any act, I don't see how you can justify making "giving verbal commands," a crime.
I have no problem calling it a crime because I believe it's completely reasonable to claim that the ordering of the executions and their being carried out are causally connected. But per your claim that words can never cause action, there is no way in which giving a verbal order could cause a person hearing the order to carry out an execution.
This makes verbal orders completely harmless, and if something is completely harmless, why is it a crime? Further, it would seem to go against the total prohibition on censorship you claimed followed as a result of the fact that words were harmless. Now you're down with trying people for war crimes provided they've made certain utterances to certain people. It certainly seems like you can no longer maintain that words are always harmless.
And biology isn't consistent with physics?
No one ever said we should throw it aside. You seem stuck on a sort of binary thinking here. Either a given input, say hearing an utterance, absolutely determines the output (behavior) or else hearing an utterance can have absolutely no causal input on behavior.
The point you raised before about different people responding different ways to words doesn't demonstrate that "words have no influence on behavior." Even in the physics of balls bouncing into one another, the properties of the ball being hit by another ball determines how it behaves in response. All people are different. Why should we expect that they all respond to words in identical fashion?
Yes, it would eliminate determinism. Free will and determinism are not binaries. An absence of determinism does not imply the presence of free will. Where is free will in a random universe?
Further, causes that are based on nothing, the spring spontaneously into being, are arbitrary and random. If our actions are arbitrary and random, they are not "ours" and so we lack free will. Certainly, our bodies act non-deterministically, but it cannot be we who determine what they do if the causes of our actions depend on nothing that exists before the act occurs.
The doctrine I am speaking about is your defense that words are responsible for a persons actions. If the words are responsible, how can the officer be responsible? If the words cause him to act, how can he be responsible for acting?
It is either/or. Either the words caused him to act or they didnt.
It is. Its just that the body is not a Rube Goldberg machine.
Now weve moved from cause to influence. Ive called into question the word influence in the original post and I must request that we avoid using it (and its various synonyms) because of its figurative upbringing and the action at a distance it implies.
We shouldnt. They are different people. The question is, given the doctrine that words are responsible for a persons actions, why would they respond so differently to the same cause, the words? Did the word come at their ear drums of at a different angle?
The causes are not based on nothing, but on the being itself. If the genesis of an act begins in the actor it implies the presence of free will for the simple reason that the actor determines his own actions and nothing else does. Moreover. if he determines his own actions they are not arbitrary, but rather, they are the acts of a highly-evolved organism, many of them decided without him even noticing, even at the cellular level.
Ok, so since Hitler never murdered anyone, and wasn't even in the room when anyone was murdered, he cannot be a criminal. All he did was speak words. If we cannot ever make speech illegal, because speech has no power to cause harm, then leaders are rarely if ever war criminals. Except you have stated that you do sometimes want people punished for speaking certain words...
It's that or we do make some speech illegal, for instance giving orders to carry out war crimes, while simultaneously maintaining that speech can never cause war crimes to be carried out. Thus, in one breath we declare the harmlessness of the crime, it's absolute inability to have led to any deaths, and with the other we condemn for speaking then.
Tell me, when a plant grows, is it the rain that causes the growth, or the sun? When a solar panel charges an RV, is it the sun's light that causes the charging, or the person who put the solar panel out, or the solar panel itself?
I'm curious, can a dog's master calling its name cause a dog to come to him? Or are animals also causally uneffected by words?
If you're unable consider that events have multiple causal elements, or to distinguish between necessary and sufficient causes, you're going to end up with an extremely confused concept of causation.
I can't help your confusion here. It seems like it should be obvious that doing the same thing to different objects doesn't result in the same effects. Are you equally confused by how you can throw the same baseball (cause) at both a wall and a window and only the window responds by breaking? Why does the same cause have disparate effects?
But you seem to be saying that for words to play any causal role in people's actions the same words should have the same effect on all people. This is like stating that a baseball, if it breaks a window, should shatter everything it is thrown at. Different objects respond to the same causes in different ways.
He led the Nazi party, which is responsible for millions of murders and war crimes. One doesnt need to believe speech causes harm and pushes people to do things in order to believe this.
Im curious: since the rooster crows before the sun comes out, does the rooster cause the sun to come out?
Is a dogs master calling his name responsible for if dog runs away? Is the leader who orders a soldier to kill an enemy the cause of him refusing?
Relationships and correlations and the fact that one event occurs before another is not enough to show causation.
No, Im not confused much about the physics. What I am confused about is your suggestion that you can move larger objects with words, like human beings and dogs, but cannot even make a leaf or feather tremble under the might of your voice.
So why dont we just test your theory? Were already half way there. Youve caused my eyes to read your words. Youve caused me to consider your arguments and I guess youve caused me to disagree.. So lets see it through. We can name any act you think you are able to make me perform and through the power of your words you can make me perform it. Go make me do something silly. Lets have some fun with it.