Well, no, it isn't. Making marks and asking a question are very different acts. Here are the same marks: "Any advice?". I am not using them here in order to asking a question. So there is a difference between making the marks and asking the question; which is to distinguish between the locution and the illocution. And neither is "invisible", what ever that might mean in this context.

If you're not asking a question when you ask "Any advice?"then what are you doing? Are you quoting a question? Maybe you're pretending to ask a question? Yet, there it is: a question. So where in space and time has this illocutionary act occured?

No, but your eliciting a response is an act of yours. Just as your post elicited this reply. I would not have written this were it not for your post, and hence this post is an act resulting from your act.

I didn't elicit any reply from you, nor did I intend to elicit any response from you. It's just not an act I have committed. You read and responded all on your own and at your own leisure.

You also made statements and asked questions. Are these not acts you performed? Why not?

If you look at the words, sure, some of the writing took the form of statements and questions, as indicated by the punctuation. But words can't act. if you looked at me, the only agent of action you've been dealing with, you'll see that there is one act and one act only, the locution, in this case the writing.

Speech act theory is embedded in social discourse, implicitly and explicitly addressing the place of utterances in social activity. Perlocutions include the acts of the listener.

From recollection, you maintain a form of hyper-individualism, which it seems makes it difficult for you to see the social aspects inherent in speech acts. I remain unable to see what your objection is.

Some methodological individualism is involved, as is nominalism, but I simply cannot detect any of these aspects you routinely speak of. When I try to understand what you mean by "speech act theory is embedded in social discourse", I'm at a loss because "social discourse" appears to be just individual people talking or writing to each other, and all of language appears to be embedded in them and nowhere else.

In performing that locution you asked a question - an illocutionary act.

It is indistinguishable from the locutionary act. So which one is it? Either there is one act, or two acts and one is invisible.

By performing that illocution you elicited this response - a perlocution.

Your response is no act of mine.

We do things with words.

You spoke them or wrote them. No others acts have occurred or are apparent or can be measured.

The key insight in speech acts may be that the content and the force of the illocution are distinct.

At some point the philosopher stops analyzing the acts of the speaker and starts sifting through his words, none of which are capable of acting, none of which can be shown to possess any measurable properties called “content” or “force”. This is why I believe the theory ought to be reworked to include “listening acts”, the acts of a listener. This would include such acts as hearing, reading, understanding, responding, and so on. The acts are visible and measurable, and don’t involve non-properties such as “content” and “force”.

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?

Yes, words cannot animate other human beings, and to believe they can is magical thinking.

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 ever 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 does one 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.

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 time—in 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 wasn’t designed to stop cars. One just needs to assume the agency in the appropriate spot in order to avoid the magical thinking.

In particular, here ↪NOS4A2 the confusion seems to come from the idea that if a threat has not totally determined the threatened's actions and state of mind, it cannot play any 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 robbed the money of the robber had not threatened them and demanded the money?

Yes, one considers the nature of any threat or circumstance and how to respond. I’m not saying the environment has no role to play in one’s 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.

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 solely the threatened populace who is responsible 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.

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 another’s emotion. That’s why speakers ought to be punished and their word’s extirpated. Censors have little other argument for censorship, so I believe it undermines their position and not mine.

Speech act theory proposes that language is often used to perform acts, like getting married, making promises, or christening a boat. According to Austin, these are different than statements and have no truth value. But beneath the act of saying or writing the words (locutionary act) are a series of other, invisible acts (illocutionary and perlocutionary acts).

So while I have no problem with different descriptions of the same phenomena, my problem is that speech act theory proposes multiple phenomena where only one is apparent.

I’m drawing the opposite conclusion: that the teller is responsible for her emotions. I’m trying to understand why you think the robber is responsible for her emotions, but you get all pissy and evade. Oh well.

I would say that he failed to do what he set out to accomplish.

So he is responsible for making her calm?

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?

If he didn’t hand over the money, is that the responsibility of the robber? Maybe he just wasn’t 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 that’s why people are advised to comply with robbers. That’s why we forgive him and the gunman is guilty

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.

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.

Anyone who supports state power, aggrandizes it with their votes, up until and including signing their name on the dotted line come election time, legitimizes state power, and is therefor responsible for breathing life into it and setting it loose on the field. Through these simple activities he becomes the state.

And that's something different from the action, obviously, because Banno's words are quite clear, but his "point" is not. How can this be? It's like the starter's pistol makes a noise, and that somehow makes all the competitors start to move, as if everybody had already agreed in advance to do that. Like the agreement had a universal force in that moment such that the bang 'meant' "Go!"

One can try to leave the matter ambiguous, I suppose.

There is no "universal force", but particular beings who have come to understood what a the bang of a starting pistol meant.

That’s a good point, thanks. Though I would argue all acts are bodily, a central problem would be what constitutes an “act”. To Austin, promising is an act over and above saying "I promise", so long as the circumstances are correct and the function isn't met with any number of "Infelicities".

It’s a play on the title of JL Austin’s “How to do thing with Words”. Over your head and below your knees, I suppose.

It’s like an idea or an argument. If you can read you can usually understand what someone is trying to say.

Your point isn’t clear from the letters you put on the screen.

That’s what I am genuinely unclear about. Are they talking about acts I am doing, or about acts somehow derived from the words I am writing? Am I or is the utterance performing the act?

Yes, one act. I wrote. Speech act theory proposes multiple other acts, does it not?

I didn’t just make marks on a screen. I wrote purposefully with the intent to express my views and questions. Is there some other act occurring here?

It is a bit of writing we call a question. The act of writing produces the question. The act is the writing. Or are more acts occurring?

I asked questions and made statements, yes. However, writing is the full extent of my actions here. Have I performed any other act?

Clearly I have made many acts of speech. I wrote words. As far as I know this is the extent of my acts, more or less.

My point was that he was ensuring the law was faithfully executed, which was his job, not that he was being charged with state crimes.

An election crime is generally a federal crime if:

• The ballot includes one or more federal candidates
• An election or polling place official abuses their office
• The conduct involves false voter registration
• The crime intentionally targets minority protected classes
• The activity violates federal campaign finance laws

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/election-crimes-and-security

I think you can convict Trump by just playing the call to Raffensperger, but I won't be on the jury.

Then it's good thing you are nowhere near a jury. Why would anyone convict Trump for a phone call in which he is taking care that the laws of the land are faithfully executed? That's the job of a president. No wonder the justice system is such a mess.

You remain so self-assured while every response has been so disparaging of your views... Free thinker? Or just as stubborn as a goat?

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'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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

incite (v.)
mid-15c., from Old French inciter, enciter "stir up, excite, instigate" (14c.), from Latin incitare "to put into rapid motion," figuratively "rouse, urge, encourage, stimulate," from in- "into, in, on, upon" (from PIE root *en "in") + citare "move, excite" (see cite). Related: Incited; inciting.

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.

According to a special counsel investigation Joe Biden willfully and knowingly stole classified documents, even some Ukraine documents that he lifted during the time his corrupt son was working for Burisma. But according to the investigator he’s too old and feeble to be prosecuted. Luckily a recent court decision against the immunity of former presidents, and the conduct of his own DOJ, leaves Biden’s prosecution open for when he finally leaves office.

But the worst indictment was of his mind. The most popular president in the history of US politics turns out to be also the most feeble and absent-minded.

It all raises the both hilarious and tragic question of who is in charge of the most powerful country in history?

I’ll put forward one theory. A recent scoop suggests the country is actually run by Biden aides and Jill Biden.

Scoop — Jill Biden after 2022 news conference: "Why didn't anyone stop that?"

Zoom in: It was Jan 19, 2022. President Biden and top aides were gathered in the Treaty Room, the president's study in the executive residence, after a press conference that ran nearly two hours. He made several factual errors.

Suddenly, the group saw Jill Biden in the doorway, Rogers writes in "American Woman":

"She had watched the news conference, and the look on her face told everyone in the room — from the president on down — that they had some explaining to do."

"Why didn't anyone stop that?" she demanded.
Behind the scenes: "This dressing down ... illustrated the degree to which she is her husband's fiercest protector," Rogers continues:

"Everyone stayed silent, looking at one another, and then at her, and back to one another. That included the most powerful man in the world. Her husband essentially played along, not offering an answer, even though aides had slipped him a card suggesting he end the press conference."

"Where were you guys?" the first lady asked the aides. "Where was the person who was going to end the press conference?"

https://www.axios.com/2024/02/09/forthcoming-book-jill-biden-why-didnt-anyone-stop-that

Yikes. Biden stole classified documents and gets off. Never did he have the unilateral declassification powers a president had. A former president who had those powers is subject to prosecution by Biden’s own DOJ. Banana republic.

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.

If you can injure someone with words, why wouldn't you demonstrate it? Because it's tantamount to sorcery.

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.

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.

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.

That’s 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.

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.

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.

Your wanting to write something about them is part of what it means for words to have force.

Can you describe this force and how it works?

There is always an excuse.

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.

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.

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

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.

A man can confer the greatest of benefits by a right use of these, and inflict the greatest of injuries by using them wrongly.

Perhaps you can demonstrate. Inflict upon me the greatest injury by using your words.

The word “Influence” and its various synonyms are words I’m 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. It’s 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 we’ll find that I am the agent of such acts and emotions.

You do not know Plato well enough to know that nothing in the dialogue supports your claims.

I never claimed it supported any of my claims. I merely used the quote as an example.

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.

The issue is what I wrote about in the OP. You haven’t touched anything I’ve claimed, I’m afraid.

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.

That’s 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.

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 in 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.

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.

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.

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. That’s 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.

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.

I understand your claim I’m just not sure I agree with it.

So you do not find what you do not understand persuasive?!

I did not find Socrates’ arguments persuasive. What’s not to understand?

You quoted me but did not address the bolded statement:

On the one hand, you claim that the words are not important, that what is important is that the reader provides them with meaning.

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.

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:

No I’m 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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m not so sure of that. At any rate, I was only pointing out the arguments Socrates was making, and they were wholly unpersuasive.

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.

I’ve never said words are not important. I love words. I don’t want to see any of them censored or banned or treated like anything other than what they are. I’m fact, my whole stance is a defense of words against those who seek to take them from us, or criminalize their use. Rather, I’ve only claimed words do not have the power people often ascribe to them.

The power of the words is comes from believing them to be true.

Believing is the power of a believer, not words.

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:

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.

In sum, speaker and auditor are a kind of dance couple. The speaker leads, and the quality of his leading influences everything that follows.

“Influence”. I wrote about this word and detailed its etymology. I’m 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.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy your figurative language, it’s 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.

You, it appears, allow the speaker to say anything at all without responsibility. And as noted above that is not how the world works or how the world understands.

No, everyone is responsible for what they say, it’s 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.

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 else’s 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, I’m 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.

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.