I guess that’s possible, but why is that my problem?
Why are you arguing with someone if you don’t want to learn from their point of view or share your point of view? Making someone defensive is counter productive to both goals.
Is there a reasonable third goal? (Maybe to convince an audience? Although, including an audience is starting to add more to the scenario ‘suppose you are arguing with someone.’)
Not obvious to me that defensiveness on their part interferes with learning from them? Providing information to the audience would be the main other reason, but the attitude I’m trying to convey more broadly is that I think I’m just … not a consequentialist about speech? (Speech is thought! Using thinking in order to select actions becomes a lot more complicated if thinking is itself construed as an action! This can’t literally be the complete answer, but I don’t know how to solve embedded agency!)
If you make someone defensive, they are incentivized to defend their character, rather than their argument. This makes it less likely that you will hear convincing arguments from them, even if they have them.
Also, speech can affect people and have consequences, such as passing on information or changing someones mood (e.g. making them defensive). For that matter, thinking is a behavior I can choose to engage in that can have consequences, e.g. if I lie to myself it will influence later perceptions and behavior, if I do a mental calculation then I have gained information. If you don’t want to call thinking or speech ‘action’ I guess that’s fine, but the arguments for consequentialism apply to them just as well.
Why are you arguing with someone if you don’t want to learn from their point of view or share your point of view? Making someone defensive is counter productive to both goals.
Is there a reasonable third goal? (Maybe to convince an audience? Although, including an audience is starting to add more to the scenario ‘suppose you are arguing with someone.’)
Not obvious to me that defensiveness on their part interferes with learning from them? Providing information to the audience would be the main other reason, but the attitude I’m trying to convey more broadly is that I think I’m just … not a consequentialist about speech? (Speech is thought! Using thinking in order to select actions becomes a lot more complicated if thinking is itself construed as an action! This can’t literally be the complete answer, but I don’t know how to solve embedded agency!)
If you make someone defensive, they are incentivized to defend their character, rather than their argument. This makes it less likely that you will hear convincing arguments from them, even if they have them.
Also, speech can affect people and have consequences, such as passing on information or changing someones mood (e.g. making them defensive). For that matter, thinking is a behavior I can choose to engage in that can have consequences, e.g. if I lie to myself it will influence later perceptions and behavior, if I do a mental calculation then I have gained information. If you don’t want to call thinking or speech ‘action’ I guess that’s fine, but the arguments for consequentialism apply to them just as well.