The indirect Realist directly perceives something in their field of vision, which they can reason to be the planet Mars. The word "sense data" should be taken as a figure of speech, not literally, in that no-one has ever found sense data in the brain. As the word "house" is a representation of an object in the world, the dot is a representation of the planet Mars.

I suppose my confusion lies in whether the “representation” is a product of the perceiver or the percieved. Are we viewing mars indirectly via the light or indirectly via some construction of our visual system?

Ok, then if you accept the rest, you accept that we sometimes do things with words?

I did something with a keyboard. I can watch myself do this. Rather, you did something with the words. You read them. This appears to be the only thing we’re doing with words.

The Indirect Realist says that they directly perceive a dot in the sky. The Direct Realist says that what they directly perceive is the cause of the dot.

I’ve always understood the indirect realist to say they directly perceive sense-data, representations, perceptions and the like.

The “directness” of perception refers to the relationship between the perceiver and the perceived. The contact between the perceiver and the perceived is direct, meaning, not indirect: the perceiver literally collides with the perceived, with no intermediary between them.

When we look at the night sky we never just see a dot. So in a way isolating a single object in the way the question proposes is impossible. We perceive the entirety of our periphery, including the information provided by our other senses. And it is only through this direct contact with the perceived that we are able to see Mars, with the light bouncing off it to directly touch our eyes.

Here it is again, set out so the actor is clear:

NOS4A2 pressed buttons on a keyboard (if that is what you indeed did)
NOS4A2 made marks on a screen
NOS4A2 made a sequence of letters
NOS4A2 wrote "Any advice?"
NOS4A2 asked a question
NOS4A2 asked for advice
NOS4A2 elicited responses from Banno and others

NOS4A2 did things with words.

Which of these is false?

I would argue against the last one because I performed no action worthy of the verb, and no one in particular was the direct object of my act. I simply put it out there. Your response and the response of others are the direct result of “listening acts”, your reading and so on. As for the rest, none of them are false.

I took some time away from reading the thread to illustrate how your act “elicit” has become separated from you. You elicited an answer days ago but your “force” never had any effect, intended or otherwise, until days later, when it would finally spring into action. A perlocution of this sort could occur over a millennia.

But if I were to film myself responding to your question, and if we were to observe this film rather than sifting through the actor’s byproducts, I think we’d have to admit that I was just plunking away on the keyboard. The other acts you describe become visible only when we analyze the text, and by then we are no longer observing the actor.

Saying that John smells smoke doesn't explain what it means for John to smell smoke.

John will perform the act of smelling and report that he does indeed smell it. We can watch smoke go into John’s nose. What more do we need?

And yet I see and talk about Joe Biden without ever being anywhere near him. The point I am making is that this supposed connection between what I see (and talk about) and the (meta)physics/epistemology of perception is a false one. You're getting stuck on an irrelevancy.

You see a television and the lights through which the imagery is displayed. You are near the television. In fact you must be near enough in order to see it. So really, all we need is a more accurate description.

Pain is very real. I don't know what else to say. You're lucky if you've never felt it.

I’ve had enough injuries to know what you’re talking about, and have no problem with people using that language to articulate what they feel. But if we are to describe what is there, metaphysically-speaking, something called “pain” just isn’t. For one, it isn’t a person, place, or thing, and so isn’t necessarily worthy of a noun-phrase. Two, what it is you are feeling (perhaps a broken bone) might be better described in terms of the actual things involved.

I think the question isn't clear. What does it mean to say that I smell some X?

A subject (you) smells some direct object (smoke, for instance).

When I see Joe Biden on TV I am seeing Joe Biden on TV, and the term "Joe Biden" refers to the man who is the President of the United States.

I don't see how this addresses the (meta)physics or epistemology of perception.

The word refers to an external object. If you were to point at that object you would never point internally. The direction towards which your eyes face, in combination with measurable distance between you and that object, never reveal that any of it is internal, and in fact prove the opposite.

We might disagree over whether or not pain is a physical or non-physical thing, but whatever it is it is real and we feel it, so I don't see how this amounts to folk psychology.

Perhaps physicalism is correct and that pain is reducible to the firing of C-fibres. It still entails that pain isn't a property of the external world object (e.g. fire) that is causally responsible for the firing of those C-fibres. The indirect realist will say the same about tastes and smells and sounds and colours. They're reducible to some bodily function (whether it be in the brain or in the eyes), not to some property of external world objects.

Pain is neither a thing nor a property. It is a noun, sure, but it is without a referent. It is folk biology because the exact situation and condition of the body right down to the cellular level isn’t immediately apparent.

Wording aside, the general idea is that when I put my hand in the fire the pain I feel isn't a property of some external world object but a mental phenomenon caused brain activity (and in turn caused by the nerves in my hand). The same principle holds with tastes and smells and sounds and visual imagery.

Many read far too much into the particulars of English grammar. The fact that we say "I feel pain" and the fact that pain is a feeling and the fact that a simple substitution gives us the non-standard "I feel a feeling" has no philosophical relevance at all. The same for tasting and smelling and hearing and seeing.

The ordinary way of speaking and the (meta)physics/epistemology of perception are two very different things.

I agree with a lot of what you said there about the over-concern with the language. But what it is one is seeing, and what object in the world that noun ought to refer too, is important and relevant; and if the indirect realist is unable to state what that is, then the ideas are immediately lacking.

A term like “pain” is a sort of folk biology. Maybe one feels a pinched nerve or some other malady that would reveal itself upon closer examination. If true, the latter ought to supersede the former as a more accurate accounting of reality.

“Directly acquainted with perceptions” seems a roundabout way of saying we perceive perceptions, which is to assume the initial point. We cannot perceive perceptions any more than we can see sight or observe observations.

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.

The doctrine I am speaking about is your defense that words are responsible for a person’s 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 didn’t.

And biology isn't consistent with physics?

It is. It’s just that the body is not a Rube Goldberg machine.

The point you raised before about different people responding different ways to words doesn't demonstrate that "words have no influence on behavior."

Now we’ve moved from “cause” to “influence”. I’ve 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.

Why should we expect that they all respond to words in identical fashion?

We shouldn’t. They are different people. The question is, given the doctrine that words are responsible for a person’s 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?

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 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.

The mechanical act is not identical because the act of writing B takes longer than writing A. More letters and punctuation is used.

It’s becoming more and more clear that people are searching for acts in the text and not in the actor. Philosophy of language in a nutshell: the philosopher drifts from a clear and plain view of the human being into the muddled pursuit of sifting through his expressions.

So how do people learn what their jobs entail or what their superiors want them to do?

People communicate with each other. If you’ve learned a language you can understand the language and words coming out of someone’s 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?

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.

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 weren’t 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. I’m not sure the fact they didn’t pull the trigger makes the organization of mass murder any less of a crime.

Would you agree that sound waves propagate deterministically such that one part in the process can be said to cause later ones?

Yes.

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?

it does, as far as I know.

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.

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.

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.

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 agree entirely, and add that the where and when of the illocutionary act is the same as the where and when of the locution: In your having written "Any advice?" you performed both a locution and an illocution; which is to claim no more than that you both wrote a sentence and you asked a question.

I performed one visible act, did one measurable thing, but you saw two visible acts, or me doing two visible things. So did I really perform two acts, or are you describing the same act in two different ways?

If I were to record myself writing I would see one act. I can point to it, witness it again and again. I am unable to see two.

Yes, you did, and continue to elicit replies by your responses. I would not have posted this, had you not posted that.

I can’t say I made any such action. I wrote the thread, you showed up. And when you finally abort the discussion no amount of eliciting will bring you back. I suppose I can understand the logic—before this therefor because of this—but I just cannot see it. I mean, we can even test it: elicit me to do something.

At best these kinds of verbs are metaphorical and they don’t much give an accurate description of what is occurring.

...which involves both making marks and asking a question. Again, the issue is that asking a question is different to making a mark, and this difference is well worth marking, and hence the terms locution and illocution.

How is it different?

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.

That’s 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.

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.

The state is composed of and run by individuals. So it’s 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 needn’t 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 “don’t fight each other” we’ll have world peace.

It doesn't seem that, by your reasoning, a state even can 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.

Why would you allow them to do so? It’s such a weird non-sequitur. Of course any objection or dissent wouldn’t 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.

You might want to consider how sound waves propagate. As it stands, your reasoning seems absolutely riddled with contradictions.

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, I’m afraid. It’s tantamount to sorcery. But given your special powers can’t you just make me agree with the force of your words?

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.

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.

Why is sharing words a human right?

It’s how we communicate with one another. We converse to survive, to mate, to live and to enjoy living. It’s a necessary part of the human condition. But as mentioned censorship is a double violation. Not only do you deny the speaker’s right to speak but also everyone else’s 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.

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.