The sound is meaningful because the neurons in the brain react in a certain way to it, differently to how they react to other sounds. As to why the neurons react in this way to these sounds, again this would require an absurdly complex model that cannot be explained in a few words - or even a few pages - and certainly not by me. Even the most knowledgeable neuroscientists in the world probably can’t explain it yet.

So nothing is in the sound wave itself that makes it meaningful. Meaning isn't transferred from one person to another.

They all play a part.

Do they all equally play a part?

The brain reacts differently to different sounds. Loud bangs elicit different responses to soothing music. Meaningful expressions elicit different responses to meaningless noise. The specifics of how and why the brain reacts differently would require an absurdly complex and comprehensive model of the brain’s neurons and their interactions with each other and other peripheral aspects of the central nervous system - including the sense organs and environmental stimuli. Trying to explain and predict the weather is child’s play in comparison.

How can a meaningful expression causally influence you differently than a meaningless expression? What is it in the word itself, and what besides surface-level kinetic energy transfer, causes you to respond differently?

All of it does, given that these things determine the existence and relative placement of the neurons and neural connections that make up my brain.

Is it these things that determine your response, or is it the word?

Who said anything about blame? Enough of the folk psychology. You've made it very clear in the past that you're an eliminative materialist. So commit to it.

We're talking about physics and causality, and it is a fact about physics that the behaviour of one material thing can – and does – have a causal affect on another material thing. It doesn't matter if these material things are organisms or machines or if they're human or plant. And causal influence is not to be understood so reductively as surface-level kinetic energy transfer.

We’re talking about speech. How does speech produce a different causal affect and response than any other sound?

Does none of you, your body, your education, your lexicon, and so on causally influence what you read and write in response?

"Entirely up to me" and "causally influenced by you" are not mutually exclusive. See compatibilism.

It is a proven physical fact that my brain activity is causally affected by what some external stimulus causes to happen to my sense organs. That's what it means to sense things in the environment.

You're playing word games when you interpret "A causally influences B" as only meaning "B is the immediate effect of A's kinetic energy". It's ridiculous.

The fact is you read the words. You scanned your eyes over them, considered them, and formulated your response. You understand the language, know how to type, reply, quote, use the website, turn on the computer. Your education, your lexicon, your intelligence, your aptitude. Your body, your brain, your lungs, your hormones, your heart, your genes. All of this “causally influenced” your response but for some reason you want to blame the words for what you write. It’s bizarre.

Nice post again, Count. You’re an enjoyable read.

The "common sensibles" (shape, size, extension, rest, motion, and number) are viewed as "most real" because they can be validated by many senses, including sight and touch, which have priority in human experience.

At the outset I am inclined to believe that these “sensibles”, too, are not sensible, but the abstractions of a sensible object: “properties”. The referents here invariably reside in the mind. But like you said, this sort of materialism is doomed to waiver between the insensible and the sensible insofar as it is about the measurements of objects considered, in abstracto, where we begin to examine the measurements more so than we do the object.

I have read the entire response and will make further comments. But I am telling you mate, this is the only reasonable answer you have given. That's fine, but it does absolutely nothing for the arguments you've been presented with, regardless of you either not getting htem, or pretending they aren't there.

I thought I’ve addressed most if not all of the arguments but I’ll be happy to address any that if I’ve missed them.

This is equivalent to saying "Preventing crime is violating people's rights to eat fresh Apples from the corner near my house". Utterly preposterous and non sequitur. There is absolutely no connection between criminalizing speech and the (obviously nonsensical, in context) "sacrifice" or "another's" right to "live and survive with others". These are non-arguments.

Preventing crime? I’m speaking about preventing someone’s speech, which I stated was “harmless and relatively innocuous behavior required to live and survive with others”. Is crime “ harmless and relatively innocuous behavior required to live and survive with others” in your book? Your equivalence is utter nonsense. I’ll repeat it for you and anyone else you think are moved like a marionette by your sophistry. “Speech is a harmless and relatively innocuous behavior required to live and survive with others. So criminalizing speech—any speech—is to sacrifice another's right to live and survive with others.”

Tell me why defamation is acceptable? Repudiating contract? Misleading commercial dealings? Politicians lying about their policies? Police lying on their reports? Judges lying about evidence in their command? Perjury? Trademark violations? You truly think these should not be regulated?
If so, you want communism. Plain and simple.

I don’t think any of them are acceptable. The problem is you’re equivocating between illegal, regulated, and acceptable behavior in a dramatic display of complete casuistry. I say none of it should be criminalized so you repeat the question, moving the goalposts, to where you are now asking if they I think they should be regulated. Or if I believe they’re acceptable. Why ask if you can’t handle the answer?

I don’t think your sophistry is acceptable and I think you should have at least enough respect for yourself to regulate your bad faith, but in any case I would never criminalize your behavior, punish you for it, or seek your sanction. It’s much better to let you express yourself so I and others can know what kind of person we’re dealing with, whether I should take you seriously, and so on. As proven, it appears I don’t need to.

But even reading words can literally cause irresistible chemical urges in the brain and these are known mental conditions.

Reading words! Finally, the reader is causing it. As long as you say the writer didn’t cause it, you’re thinking more clearly.

It is not a coincidence or magical thinking you read my words and respond to them. That’s entirely up to you whether you do or not. It’s magical thinking to believe I cause you to respond.

In any case, I am more interested in your defense of not making things like contractual lies, slander/defamation, trademark violation, perjury etc... illegal rather than 'private speech' as it were (bad wording, but hopefully says what I want). Is there something for you to say here? Why would we want to allow the chips to fall where they may in these areas?

For my own tastes it's because of principle. Namely, I do not think any person nor group of people should have the power to pick and choose what the rest of us can say, write, and think. Far better to let the chips fall as they may than to give anyone that power. I'll outline some other principles below, but there are plenty more.

Speech is a harmless and relatively innocuous behavior required to live and survive with others. So criminalizing speech—any speech—is to sacrifice another's right to live and survive with others.

But worse, the reason's stated as to why a censor might criminalize speech are entirely superstitious. In fact I would argue that the censor's superstitions are the most prevalent, ancient, and at the same time, most disastrous of superstitions of the entirety of human existence.

The evidence of this is in their reasoning, where they invariably waiver between the actual and the figurative when making their claims (this word literally"triggers" that action, where "trigger" in the literal sense means "to fire by pulling a mechanical trigger". They must be figurative because they cannot explain how it actually occurs). One can read historical accounts of censorship (the trial of socrates for example) to see how this is the case. Physically speaking, speech doesn't possess enough kinetic energy required to affect the world that the superstitious often claims it does. Speech, for instance, doesn't possess any more kinetic energy than any other articulated guttural sound. Writing doesn't possess any more energy than any other scratches or ink blots on paper. And so on. So the superstitious imply a physics of magical thinking that contradicts basic reality: that symbols and symbolic sounds, arranged in certain combinations, can affect and move other phases of matter above and beyond the kinetic energy inherent in the physical manifestation of their symbols. So in my view, to choose to censor is to tacitly believe in superstition and sorcery. Personally, I refuse to do so. Far better to let the chips fall as they may.

But also I wish to possess knowledge. Speech, and therefore our knowledge of history, is as fragile as the Herculaneum papyri. If we were able to gather the sum-total of human speech into a vast pile of writings, art, and artifacts, imagine if some censor was allowed to have his superstitious way with it. What works have already been robbed from humankind we'll probably never know, but in this sense censorship is a form of robbery, perhaps of the worst kind. (Think of what was stolen from mankind with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria). Knowledge of human history must also include lies, fabrications, insults, hate speech, and anything else that is speech. So far better to let the chips fall as they may than to engage in robbery of that kind. Far better to possess knowledge than to be ignorant.

I have plenty more arguments and could go on ad nauseam but I'll refrain for now.

I still prefer "How do we use the word real?"

Charles Pierce claimed that the term “real” was invented by scholastic philosophers to signify “that which is not a figment”, in order to close the debate around the problem of universals. I’m not sure if that is true or not, but I thought it was neat. Before then the word “real” already had its use in “real property”, something like “immovable property”, which we know today as real estate.

So how would that work in anarchy if hierarchies are not allowed and everyone has as much as a say as everyone else?

When I was younger I used visit a remote beach to surf with some squatters, some of whom were old homesteaders and anarchists. They had a little community there. It was small, but there were disputes, and they were settled all by deliberation. Not a single incident of violence in the decades they stayed there, at least until the government came in, forcibly evicted them, and burned down their homes.

A minor setback. There are plenty ways around it.

Hey, I don't know what's wrong with the rest of the world but reading old translations of 150 year old political theory is :fire: -- keeps me up all night.

There are some good writers who tend towards anarchism. Less philosophical, systematic, more poetic, but enjoyable to read at least. Oscar Wilde, Percy Shelly, Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and Albert Jay Nock come to mind.

In fact, Tolstoy’s “On Anarchy” fits nicely into this thread topic. He is more of an individualist anarchist, where the revolution occurs within the individual, offering a different path for the aspiring anarchist than the Marxist and the violent anarchists of his own day.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/leo-tolstoy-on-anarchy

5,000 years of recorded human history where wars are waged and the stronger or larger force takes and destroys from the weaker or smaller force is an "assumption?"

Like, it's just something I randomly made up one day? Are you serious? :rofl:

Bruh. Nah. Just nah. Come on, you're not that dense.

You don’t mention that these forces were more often than not managed, armed, and employed by states. Political scientist Rudolph Rummel estimated that around 300 million people were killed by governments in the last century alone. He coined the term “democide”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide

That’s another distinction between the statist and the anarchist: they’re assumptions of human nature. Hobbes’ bellum omnium contra omnes rings true or false depending on one’s degree of statism.

That’s why I fear the statist more, because they believe humans require authority and absolutism to keep their wildest impulses in check. Presumably, this includes themselves as well. So if authority and absolutism were to collapse, we know who to look out for.

It would be very fitting if instead of reducing the issue to bathrooms, we talked about whether the women were right. Was the UK Supreme Court right? Were women's rights endangered by substituting transgender women for biological women?

The issues become much clearer and easier to settle in one’s mind when one abandons the concept of gender entirely, or at least relegate it to a grammatical concept, a relic of language, rather than a statement about biology. It ends the cognitive dissonance required to support and think about these ideas clearly.

If you look at the dispute between Marx and Bakunin, both of whom admired the Paris Commune, the schism was about the trust in and usefulness of authority. Marx foresaw a dictatorship, a transitional state, while Bakunin wanted no such thing. Historically speaking and in practice, the communist parties have a deep desire for authority.

The FBI is reopening up an investigation into the cocaine found in the whitehouse a year or two back, the pipe bomb on Jan 6th, and the leakers of the Supreme Court decision. Knowing now that Hunter Biden and other long time allies to dear old dad were effectively acting as the US president during Biden’s reign, this could get interesting.

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/27/fbi-white-house-cocaine-supreme-court-leak-investigations

Your metaphorical slogan about killing the Boers turned into a real killing of a farmer, by the admission of the killer.

The convicted murderer of a Vryheid farmer told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Pietermaritzburg on Thursday that his crime was influenced by the "kill the Boer, kill the farmer" slogan he heard at African National Congress rallies. Ntuthuko Chuene, 28, is serving a life sentence for the murder of Godfrey Frederick Lanz Heuer on August 22, 1992. He also stole a Rossi Special firearm, ammunition and a suitcase containing about R1000 in cash, a pocket calculator and books. He said he stole the guns to defend his community from the Inkatha Freedom Party. Chuene said his accomplice in the killing, Piet Nkosi, was later shot and killed by the police. He said he was forced by circumstances in the area where he lived, Mondlo, to commit the crimes. The killing was not directed at Heuer, as he just happened to be a white farmer at the wrong time. "I could have killed any other white man I came across at that time. My frustrations were directed to white men because they had what we did not have," Chuene said. "I am sorry, I look back now and regret." Heuer's wife Amy said she did not believe Chuene killed her husband because of politically motivated reasons. "I do not want him to be granted amnesty. I watched my husband die in front of me and could not help him," she said.

https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1999/9910/p991014a.htm

Look what you’re forcing yourself to defend.

A couple from Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal were severely assaulted on their farm while their attackers shouted, “Kill the Boer, kill the Farmer”. Four attackers forced their way into the farmhouse of Tim Platt and his wife, Amanda, during the early morning hours of 17 August. The attackers gained entry to the house by breaking down the front door and security gate, as well as a window and burglar bars.

Amanda was beaten with a bolt cutter and lead pipes, and eventually stabbed with a spear. While her husband was still trying to fight off the attackers, she managed to escape and returned armed to save her husband. Upon her return, the attackers had already fled.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230922163307/https://afriforum.co.za/en/attackers-chant-kill-the-boer-kill-the-farmer-before-stabbing-female-victim-with-spear/

Good read, Count, thank you for that.

I’m reading Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism by Paul Forster, but I imagine the themes are exactly the same, how Peirce saw the threat of a new paradigm and wished to provide a realist alternative for philosophy and science. I’ll try to find a copy of Olesky’s book.

I’m still unsure whether nominalism was in fact any sort of paradigm. I also believe it’s a sort of fallacy to see the impact of the musings of philosophers in the general culture without knowing the extent to which those philosophers are actually read.

Nope. Looks like he’s calling out your anti-American team on Memorial Day. I love that kind of stuff.

A socialist and race-nationalist party in the SA government chants “Kill the boer! Kill the farmer” and those who question the racism and the possibility that it might be related to the brutal torture and murders of farmers, are racists, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, or far-right. How is this possible?

While it is probably true that racists and the dreaded far-right have adopted the issue due to the purported colors of the skins of those involved, it should not mean all the racists on the left of them must drop the issue or otherwise impugn anyone who talks of it. This can only further racialize and muddy the issue.

Trump bringing it to light only exasperates it further. His loose use of the word “genocide” sends the symbolic mind on a quibbling rampage. When Trump thought the images of crosses were graves, not realizing it was a monument, the media took him to task for this small discrepancy without mentioning that each cross represented the grave of a murdered and possibly tortured person. The ages of the victims ranged from two to eighty-seven, but anti-Trumpism forces people to use even the most heartbreaking of imagery as a ghoulish cudgel against their folk devil.

Conspiracy theory or not, there are people who live in fear and feel racially persecuted, as is evident by the stories. Large political parties are chanting for their murder. Cases are rarely solved. Police are slow or are otherwise under-funded. One of the advocacy groups for these farmers argue that many of the attacks are particularly brutal, involving rape and torture, suggesting a level of hatred or barbarism beyond just the petty crime it is often claimed to be. The memoir of a friend to the current president wrote that Ramiphosa said the ANC’s 25-year pan for dealing with the whites “would be like boiling a frog alive, which is done by raising the temperature very slowly”. There are discrepancies between what people report, the data is old or missing or insufficient, and the government is corrupt or dysfunctional, leaving the “check the data” crowd looking really silly. All of this fosters fear, loss of trust, and propagates even more conspiracy theory.

On top of that crimes against members of other ethnicities across the country are met with even far less concern. Conditions for farm workers are often abysmal. Everyone, regardless of ethnicity, must fear crime and violence both in the cities and in rural areas, and any private owner of land is at risk having it expropriated for “the public interest”, or in other words, due to the whim of politicians.

All of these leads to only one conclusion, namely, the absolute failure of racist and collectivist governments in Africa, apartheid and beyond. Why they are defended is anyone’s guess.

https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/safrica2/Safarms7.htm

https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/08/23/south-africa-farmworkers-dismal-dangerous-lives

https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/africa/southern-africa/south-africa/report-south-africa/

https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/2017/03/25/-bury-them-alive-white-south-africans-fear-for-their-future-as-horrific-farm-attacks-esc

https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/factsheets/factsheet-statistics-farm-attacks-and-murders-south-africa

https://www.artikels.afriforum.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Farm-attacks-and-murders-in-South-Africa-2023.pdf

"In his brutal honesty, Ramaphosa told me of the ANC's 25-year strategy to deal with the whites: it would be like boiling a frog alive, which is done by raising the temperature very slowly. Being cold-blooded, the frog does not notice the slow temperature increase, but if the temperature is raised suddenly, the frog will jump out of the water. He meant that the black majority would pass laws transferring wealth, land, and economic power from white to black slowly and incrementally, until the whites lost all they had gained in South Africa, but without taking too much from them at any given time to cause them to rebel or fight."

https://irr.org.za/media/articles-authored-by-the-institute/the-anc-and-ramaphosas-1994-plan-for-the-whites-politicsweb-17-september-2017

instead of being so dumb as extrapolating from anecdotal evidence maybe study the subject first.

The stories from survivors of attempted murder, rape, torture, and robbery are anecdotal evidence. Do you say that about all victims of crimes or just the ones that are politically inconvenient?

Ignorance is no excuse. The stories may be inconvenient for you, but if they continue I hope your conscience gets the better of you.

https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/2017/03/25/-bury-them-alive-white-south-africans-fear-for-their-future-as-horrific-farm-attacks-esc

Because all physical events have some prior physical cause, and if eliminative materialism is correct then there’s just a physical brain and a physical body and not some non-physical mind that “interferes”. There’s just electricity and chemicals responding to physical stimuli causing muscle fibres to contract or relax, and other such things.

It’s true, I do not need a non-physical mind to explain how a human being listens to his environment, or otherwise uses the environment in various ways. That electricity and chemicals is produced and managed by the human being, and nothing else.

Yes, I haven’t claimed otherwise. How the brain and the body respond to external stimulation is determined by its current structure and inner workings, just as how a computer responds to me typing on the keyboard is determined by its current structure and inner workings, but it is still the case that the human brain and body, like every other physical object in the universe, is causally influenced by things external to itself.

Then, shouldn’t it be the other way around? That the computer is causally influencing you to look at it, to read, to type, to understand what you’re typing?

You can't just cut a long causal chain into individual pieces and claim that one part is not the cause of the subsequent part.

Sure I can. Some acts begin and end. Where do you propose we begin the act of hearing? Some arbitrary point out there in the environment?

You might as well try to argue that the brain doesn’t cause the muscles to contract because once the electrical signals have left the brain and entered the muscle the muscle has “taken over”. So I guess we can only say that the muscle causes itself to contract?

I wouldn’t try to argue that because the brain and muscles are a part of the same physical, biological system, the majority of which is required to contract muscles.

You should try listening to victim’s stories. They’re horrific, and I don’t believe they’re lying because they happen to be white.

No one really cares about any of that, apparently, or actively dismisses it.

The human body might be more complex than a plant and a computer but its internal behaviour is still causally influenced by external stimulation. The human body is not an isolated system.

It’s not an isolated system but it is a different system. Humans don’t use photosynthesis, for example.

If you want to argue against determinism (whether compatibilist or incompatibilist) and in favour of libertarian free will, then you must reject eliminative materialism, because eliminative materialism entails that human behaviour is a deterministic response to prior physical causes, both internal and external to the body.

I still don’t know how eliminative materialism entails that human behavior is a deterministic response to prior physical causes. Further, even if you assume determinism, many of the “prior physical causes” are prior states of the brain and body, which is still the person in question except at an earlier time.

What is an example of prior physical causes external to the body? What else besides yourself causes you to listen?

The soundwaves cause transduction to happen which causes neurons to fire which causes the muscles to contract and relax which causes the ball to be kicked which causes the window to break.

The sensory receptor causes the conversion of the energy in a stimulus into an electrical signal. That is what it does. Only this thing can cause that change. From then on every cause, effect, change, or whatever is under the complete control and influence of the body, which uses a different form of energy to make these conversions, and not any outside kinetic stimulus.

As I said before, your claim that one causal chain ends at this point and that a second causal chain starts immediately after, and that there's no causal connection between the two, is both inconsistent with physics and an arbitrary delineation.

I completely reject that formulation.

It’s not inconsistent nor arbitrary because only one system in the universe is converting that energy into another, and using that energy as it does. The body uses sound waves and other aspects of the environment to extract that information. Soundwaves don’t cause us to listen, to differentiate between one sound and another, to turn our heads or cover our ears, to understand the language spoken or to disregard it entirely.

If you want to employ causal chains to explain it then the causal chain occurring in one environment is taken over, used and controlled by another system, operating its own movements and providing its own conditions, and utilizing its own energy to do so. Your efforts to paint it as a kinetic Rube Goldberg device is inconsistent with physics, biology, and is completely arbitrary.

They are false analogies. Human beings are unfathomably different than venus fly traps, sunflowers, and computers. Different physical systems means different behavior. Why can't you stick to the one under discussion?

I still don't require non-physical minds to explain any human behavior, so don't need to bite any bullets. I'm not sure what you're on about.

While it's true that the environment can influence behavior, the genesis of all behavior occurs in the one behaving. The mechanical energy of a sound wave, for instance, is converted into electrochemical energy in a process called "transduction". That behavior, that act—transduction—is an act of the human being and not the sound wave. Do you disagree?

It's not like saying that. Venus fly-traps, sunflowers and computers. See if you can stick to human beings for once instead of evading the arguments with false analogies.

All physical events are a response to prior physical events. Matter doesn't move apropos of nothing. The human body and brain are material, and behave according to the same principles as all matter. If my arm moves it's because it was caused to move by something else, often electrochemical signals from the brain, and if these electrochemical signals are sent then it's because they were caused to send by something else – and oftentimes they were caused to send by stimulation of the sense organs. That's just how biology works.

It's not clear to me what you mean by "a human being is the source of his own actions". I think you're equivocating. If you mean by this something similar to "a Venus flytrap is the source of its own actions (e.g. closing its jaws)" then it does not contradict what I am saying, because it is also correct to say that a Venus flytrap's jaws are caused to close by a fly's movements. But if you mean by this to argue that humans (unlike Venus flytraps) have something like libertarian free will then this requires either that physics as we understand it or eliminative materialism are false such that the electrochemical signals sent by my brain to my arm are not a causal response to sensory stimulation but a response to some mental "will".

What I mean is nothing else in the universe is source of a human being's actions. The electrochemical signals sent by your brain to your arm, for example, are not foreign to you. A response to foreign stimulus is still such an act, and caused by the only thing that can perform it: you.

“Ambush”? Clearly you’ve been following the corporate press like a little lapdog. To me it was a much-needed exposure. Though the crosses were not graves, like Trump assumed, they in fact represented actual victims, and the exposure highlighted an issue that until now most have ignored, or actively dismissed. The man who put them there, his family brutally murdered, is happy people are learning about it. You’re the one who is not happy about it, perhaps because you’re a monster who doesn’t care about racial violence and terrorism; that’s all.

Yes. Determinism is the inevitable consequence of eliminative materialism.

How is that the case?

I haven't done anything like that. I have simply pointed out that – if eliminative materialism is correct – the physics is clear; the wider environment causally influences human behaviour, just as it causally influences animal and plant behaviour, and so your suggestion that another person's speech cannot causally influence my actions is wrong.

You somehow seem to want something like libertarian free will whilst also denying anything like a non-physical mind. These positions are incompatible. So, once again, you need to pick your poison and abandon one of these two positions.

You’ve simply made that assertion, sure. I am not a determinist, however. Unlike you I need neither non-physical minds nor distant events to believe that a human being is the source of his own actions.

You can demonstrate it on your own by moving a part of your body, perhaps your arm. After this you should have all the evidence required to answer the question “who or what moved my arm”. If you can find anything else in the universe that did so, let me know.

Uh oh the Trump family is getting rich off of crypto? How dare they!

The Biden family hasn’t produced a goddamn thing in their lives but a bunch of shell companies and empty promises. But where were you?

And I don’t care because you’ve been crying wolf for almost 10 years now, and then everything goes on just fine. Hilarious how that works.

Right, and we can create a causal chain back to the Big Bang and say the Big Bang causally affects my behavior. I’m not interested.

Subject is a philosophical and grammatical distinction. You put words and soundwaves in the subject position and listeners in the object position. “Agent” is another one, a being with the capacity to act and influence the environment. You reserve agency for words and the environment but not for human listeners. It is these little tricks that are the misleading aspects of your arguments.

Sorry I missed it.

This seems to me like saying that if I kick a football through a window then I didn’t cause the window to break, as if I’m causally responsible only for kicking the ball and not also for what the ball does to the window after being kicked.

Your suggestion that this sequence of events is one causal chain, that this subsequent sequence of events is a second causal chain, and that there's no causal connection between the two is both incompatible with physics and a seemingly arbitrary delineation.

We ought not to treat listeners as passive objects, like a window. You have to switch the position of the subject, with him at the end of the causal chain. A more accurate analogy would be like saying that a football flying at your head can’t cause you to catch it, or kick it, or whatever.

The point is: listeners are subjects and agents too. Any and all responses of the body to outside stimulus are self-caused. You are causally responsible for transducing soundwaves into electrical signals, for example. Nothing can cause transduction but the biology. Nothing can send those signals to the brain but the biology. Nothing can cause you to understand the signals but the biology.

It appears that you treat human bodies as passive receptacles of outside stimulus, and Rube Goldberg devices when it comes to how they operate, and not active agents themselves. That's mainly what I'm objecting to.

A brain state is just the state of the brain, i.e its composition and the behaviour of its neurons. It is the way it is because of a long chain of causal events, both internal to the body and external. Our brains are not isolated systems.

I know what they are I just believe there is no such thing as a brain state. States are imaginary pictures of any given object at any given time. I understand their use in discourse but don’t see how a state of a brain factors into this discussion. The world does not have a frame rate, for one, but living brains are never disembodied. The closest thing we can come to a brain state is a brain floating in formaldehyde in a jar. So perhaps a "body state" would be more useful. That's all I'm saying.

Also of relevance is causality and the science of human behaviour. Unfortunately I don't have access to the full paper, but as a summary:

The general point is that your claim that speech can't influence behaviour is incompatible with eliminative materialism, which you seem to endorse.

So either speech can influence behaviour or eliminative materialism is false. Pick your poison.

I don't see it from your summary. Are you able to explain why one is incompatible with the other?

Are you saying I should approach the issue like Joyce?

I’m not so interested in how Joyce would approach the issue. What I am interested in is how Pierce approaches the issue. Pierce is dismissive of nominalism and treats those who agree with it as tools of the devil, men who espouse a demonic doctrine.

Still, it is not obvious why Peirce should view the question of the ontological status of laws and universals as fundamental to philosophy. Nor is it obvious what there is in so abstract a question to elicit the contempt he directs towards his nominalist adversaries. Peirce insists that a pragmatist ‘will be the most open-minded of all men’ (5.499, c. 1905), yet this does not stop him from denouncing nominalism as ‘the most ­ blinding of all systems’ (5.499, c. 1905), a ‘disgraceful habitude’ (6.175, 1906) and a ‘philistine line of thought’ (1.383, c. 1890). He declares nominalism ‘a protest against the only kind of thinking that has ever advanced human culture’ (3.509, 1897) and ‘deadly poison to any ­ living reasoning’ (NEM 3: 201, 1911). He takes it to involve ‘monstrous’ ­ doctrines (1.422, c. 1896) defended by ‘mostly superficial men’ (W2: 239, 1868) who ‘do not reason logically about anything’ (1.165, c. 1897). Nominalism, he says, is ‘of all the philosophies the most inadequate, and perhaps the most superficial, one is tempted to say the silliest possible’ (NEM 4: 295, 1905). It ‘and all its ways are devices of the Devil, if devil there be’ (SS: 118, 1909).

- Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism

Can I ask why you dedicate so much energy into arguing a point that is illogical? What is the point of this if there is no effort to find common ground?

I enjoy arguing about it. What is illogical about it?

I wonder if when Queen Victoria gifted President Hayes the Resolute Desk the anti-Hayes crowd were chirping about it. Probably. But history has proven no one really cares in the long run.

I suppose your words couldn’t move much, then. Tells me all I need.

It seems palatable to me.

But there are many positions in regards to nominalism. It’s an ancient argument. Hobbes was a “bonafide nominalist”, or Hume, or Locke for example, so I just assumed we had an idea of what nominalism is.

No such evidence was put in front of me. I’m not surprised when people evade simple arguments, especially when they have none of their own.