Their argument is quite simple, as I understand it: […] It borders on a technicality, and elsethread I disputed its practical importance, but for all that it is successful at what it’s trying to do.
It’s worse than a technicality—it’s an equivocation between meanings of “cause”. In ordinary speech we do not speak of one thing “causing” another if, say, the purported “cause” is merely one of several possible (collectively) necessary-but-not-sufficient conditions for the purported “effect” to occur—even though, in a certain sense, such a relationship is “causal”—because if we did, then we would have to reply to “what caused that car accident” with “the laws of physics, plus the initial conditions of the universe”.
So kithpendragon proves that words can “cause harm” in the latter technical sense, but the force of the argument comes from the claim that words can “cause harm” in the former colloquial sense—and that has assuredly not been proven.
(And this is without even getting into the part about “large cascades of massive change” and “downward spiral of self destruction with truly unfortunate consequences” and such things, that can allegedly be caused by “what seems like a tiny thing”—a claim that is presented without any support at all, but without which the injunction that motivates the post simply fails to follow from any of the rest of it!)
How about a concrete example of a benign interaction? Suppose you’re sitting at a table having a meal with someone in your household. You look up and ask “Please pass the salt”, and they do so. I think most people would agree that your asking caused the salt to be passed because the conditions were right for it to do so.
The same can (and does) happen with less benign interactions. To stay in the abstract, threatening, coercion, and bullying come readily to mind. How many people have been threatened into doing terrible things? Or ordered by a superior? This kind of thing happens all the time.
I think most people would agree that your asking caused the salt to be passed because the conditions were right for it to do so.
I do not agree with that.
In the everyday sense of ‘cause’, you didn’t cause the person in question to pass the salt. They chose to pass the salt, after you asked them to do so. They could’ve chosen otherwise. (Indeed, it’s easy to imagine reasons why they would.)
How many people have been threatened into doing terrible things? Or ordered by a superior?
These are examples of causation by actions, not by words. The words in question communicate information about intentions and actions; but the actions (and/or threat/promise thereof) are what cause things to happen.
They might not pass you the salt. But they most probably will not unless you ask. The asking causes your dinner partner to at least consider passing you the salt, where the thought might not have ever come up otherwise. More simply, your words caused the thought in someone else that resulted in your being handed the salt. That’s as much cause as your releasing a catch causing the spring tension to be released and resulting in a lid opening.
You don’t need to actually follow through on a threat for it to be effective, someone need only believe that the threat is genuine. That constitutes a necessary condition and a linguistic trigger.
That’s as much cause as your releasing a catch causing the spring tension to be released and resulting in a lid opening.
A cause of the thought? Sure. A cause of the action? Certainly not.
You don’t need to actually follow through on a threat for it to be effective, someone need only believe that the threat is genuine. That constitutes a necessary condition and a linguistic trigger.
Actions are what cause people to believe in threats. The words communicate intent, they do not themselves cause ‘harm’ or anything else.
Maybe the issue is definition and we should taboo “cause”. I’ll also taboo “words” and “harm” while I’m at it. My core claim is that:
The purpose of symbolic language is to transmit ideas from one mind to another. In the new mind, the idea can prompt or set the stage for (sometimes strong) urges to arise. Humans acting on strong urges can be destructive in lots of ways.
The “core claim” you quote is actually several claims appended to each other, with the connections between them left as implicit additional claims. So when you ask if I disagree that “this” happens, I can’t answer in a binary fashion because you’re asking multiple questions, some of which are unstated (and which I have to infer, with the possibility of inferring incorrectly).
(This is very similar to one of the several ways in which your post itself is flawed.)
I will comment as I am able, however. So:
The purpose of symbolic language is to transmit ideas from one mind to another.
This can reasonably be said to be a purpose of symbolic language (certainly it’s not the only purpose, but it’s a big one).
In the new mind, the idea can prompt or set the stage for (sometimes strong) urges to arise.
I am not quite sure what you mean by “urges” (I can think of multiple possible sense of this word which might be relevant), but clearly you’re referring to some variety of mental states.
Mental states in general arise for various reasons and in various ways. Any given mental state may be capable of arising in any of a variety of ways, “triggered” or immediately preceded by any of a number of precursor mental states or external stimuli etc. Certainly ideas introduced by communication by another person is one possible type of such precursors or triggers.
Does this mean that the communicative act “caused” (“prompted” and “set the stage for” seem to be synonyms for “caused”, with, perhaps, variation in emphasis) the mental state in question? Maybe, maybe not. In the case of overdetermination, the answer would be “not”. (How common is that case? I don’t know. Fairly common, it seems to me.) In other cases, the answer is more ambiguous. It depends on the type of mental state, certainly. Whatever you mean by “urges”, it seems particularly unlikely that mental states that could be described thus (especially those which can reasonably be described as “strong urges”), would be “caused” (in a non-overdetermined way) by communicative acts of others.
[… here we have an apparent gap in the chain of reasoning …]
You jump from “urges” to “humans acting on” those “urges”. This seems like it needs more examination, to say the least. Most people don’t just act on whatever thoughts pop into their heads. Reflexive actions exist, of course, but I’m not sure you have those in mind. If I understand correctly the sort of mental states you refer to, they are such that acting on them, or not doing so, is a choice. People are quite capable of suppressing even very strong emotions, taking no actions whatsoever on their basis.
Humans acting on strong urges can be destructive in lots of ways.
This is literally true, but quite misleading in its implication that “strong urges” are somehow unusual or unique in being mental states which, when humans act on them, result in destructive behavior.
In fact people can be destructive in lots of ways regardless of the nature of the mental state or states which resulted in those destructive actions. A man may strangle a rival in a fit of rage, or strike down a pedestrian with his car while being distracted by a funny picture on his smartphone, or carefully orchestrate a murder while seething with bile and cold hatred, or calmly sign an order that sends thousands to their deaths while taking his morning tea. There is nothing particularly special about any of these mental states. It is simply easy to inflict pain and death and horror, if one is placed in circumstances that permit such actions.
While the commenter (above and below) did not appear satisfied with your answer, the idea of inverting is interesting—how can words cause the opposite of harm seems like something that can be safely established/with examples.
It’s worse than a technicality—it’s an equivocation between meanings of “cause”. In ordinary speech we do not speak of one thing “causing” another if, say, the purported “cause” is merely one of several possible (collectively) necessary-but-not-sufficient conditions for the purported “effect” to occur—even though, in a certain sense, such a relationship is “causal”—because if we did, then we would have to reply to “what caused that car accident” with “the laws of physics, plus the initial conditions of the universe”.
So kithpendragon proves that words can “cause harm” in the latter technical sense, but the force of the argument comes from the claim that words can “cause harm” in the former colloquial sense—and that has assuredly not been proven.
(And this is without even getting into the part about “large cascades of massive change” and “downward spiral of self destruction with truly unfortunate consequences” and such things, that can allegedly be caused by “what seems like a tiny thing”—a claim that is presented without any support at all, but without which the injunction that motivates the post simply fails to follow from any of the rest of it!)
How about a concrete example of a benign interaction? Suppose you’re sitting at a table having a meal with someone in your household. You look up and ask “Please pass the salt”, and they do so. I think most people would agree that your asking caused the salt to be passed because the conditions were right for it to do so.
The same can (and does) happen with less benign interactions. To stay in the abstract, threatening, coercion, and bullying come readily to mind. How many people have been threatened into doing terrible things? Or ordered by a superior? This kind of thing happens all the time.
I do not agree with that.
In the everyday sense of ‘cause’, you didn’t cause the person in question to pass the salt. They chose to pass the salt, after you asked them to do so. They could’ve chosen otherwise. (Indeed, it’s easy to imagine reasons why they would.)
These are examples of causation by actions, not by words. The words in question communicate information about intentions and actions; but the actions (and/or threat/promise thereof) are what cause things to happen.
They might not pass you the salt. But they most probably will not unless you ask. The asking causes your dinner partner to at least consider passing you the salt, where the thought might not have ever come up otherwise. More simply, your words caused the thought in someone else that resulted in your being handed the salt. That’s as much cause as your releasing a catch causing the spring tension to be released and resulting in a lid opening.
You don’t need to actually follow through on a threat for it to be effective, someone need only believe that the threat is genuine. That constitutes a necessary condition and a linguistic trigger.
A cause of the thought? Sure. A cause of the action? Certainly not.
Actions are what cause people to believe in threats. The words communicate intent, they do not themselves cause ‘harm’ or anything else.
Maybe the issue is definition and we should taboo “cause”. I’ll also taboo “words” and “harm” while I’m at it. My core claim is that:
Do you disagree that this happens? If so, why?
The “core claim” you quote is actually several claims appended to each other, with the connections between them left as implicit additional claims. So when you ask if I disagree that “this” happens, I can’t answer in a binary fashion because you’re asking multiple questions, some of which are unstated (and which I have to infer, with the possibility of inferring incorrectly).
(This is very similar to one of the several ways in which your post itself is flawed.)
I will comment as I am able, however. So:
This can reasonably be said to be a purpose of symbolic language (certainly it’s not the only purpose, but it’s a big one).
I am not quite sure what you mean by “urges” (I can think of multiple possible sense of this word which might be relevant), but clearly you’re referring to some variety of mental states.
Mental states in general arise for various reasons and in various ways. Any given mental state may be capable of arising in any of a variety of ways, “triggered” or immediately preceded by any of a number of precursor mental states or external stimuli etc. Certainly ideas introduced by communication by another person is one possible type of such precursors or triggers.
Does this mean that the communicative act “caused” (“prompted” and “set the stage for” seem to be synonyms for “caused”, with, perhaps, variation in emphasis) the mental state in question? Maybe, maybe not. In the case of overdetermination, the answer would be “not”. (How common is that case? I don’t know. Fairly common, it seems to me.) In other cases, the answer is more ambiguous. It depends on the type of mental state, certainly. Whatever you mean by “urges”, it seems particularly unlikely that mental states that could be described thus (especially those which can reasonably be described as “strong urges”), would be “caused” (in a non-overdetermined way) by communicative acts of others.
You jump from “urges” to “humans acting on” those “urges”. This seems like it needs more examination, to say the least. Most people don’t just act on whatever thoughts pop into their heads. Reflexive actions exist, of course, but I’m not sure you have those in mind. If I understand correctly the sort of mental states you refer to, they are such that acting on them, or not doing so, is a choice. People are quite capable of suppressing even very strong emotions, taking no actions whatsoever on their basis.
This is literally true, but quite misleading in its implication that “strong urges” are somehow unusual or unique in being mental states which, when humans act on them, result in destructive behavior.
In fact people can be destructive in lots of ways regardless of the nature of the mental state or states which resulted in those destructive actions. A man may strangle a rival in a fit of rage, or strike down a pedestrian with his car while being distracted by a funny picture on his smartphone, or carefully orchestrate a murder while seething with bile and cold hatred, or calmly sign an order that sends thousands to their deaths while taking his morning tea. There is nothing particularly special about any of these mental states. It is simply easy to inflict pain and death and horror, if one is placed in circumstances that permit such actions.
While the commenter (above and below) did not appear satisfied with your answer, the idea of inverting is interesting—how can words cause the opposite of harm seems like something that can be safely established/with examples.
The article is rather vague but seems to imply/say that words alone can cause harm. Which is not the case in these examples.