I assume you'll decline accepting Social Security payments from the "enemy".As Reagan said, government is the enemy. — Jackson
Of course we make conscious decisions, and bear responsibility for those decisions. But an optimal decision making process consists of a deliberation based on information that has come to our attention. This information comprises an external influence - it is a factor. In the absence of certain information, the specific decision would not have been made. It is therefore part of the causal chain.A connection, influence, the words caused me to go buy something—it’s all figurative. None of it negates the conscious, decision-making process, which is the true cause of one’s activity. Words cause none of it. — NOS4A2
I don’t go out and buy something whenever I see an advertisement for it. — NOS4A2
Philosophically, it’s magical thinking. Speaking cause little more than the movement of air. Speech is an act but words are not actors. — NOS4A2
OK.
But it's still an empirical fact that advertising increases sales. That's why companies spend so much money on advertising. And it's an empirical fact that campaigning increases votes. That's why political parties spend so much money on campaigning.
It is an empirical fact that our decisions are influenced by our environment, including the things other people tell us.
That you, personally, don't succumb to such influences every time is a strawman.
So you're saying that persuasion/incitement is a (meta)physical impossibility? That advertising and campaigning work would prove you wrong.
And if we were to take a more technical view, the libertarian concept of free will is inconsistent with what I think is the more reasonable account that the human mind (and any associated decision making) is a product of brain activity which is subject to the same deterministic (and occasionally stochastic) physical processes as everything else. We don't have anything like a "soul" that is able to transcend these influences.
The physical processes that produce brain activity are nonetheless that of the individual, and therefor determined by him. Until you can show that a human’s action is determined by some outer or foreign force, it seems to me your view is without merit. — NOS4A2
Bullets can tear through a person’s body. Shooting someone is justifiably a criminal act. Words possess no such force, have zero connection to another’s actions, and thus speaking cannot be justified as criminal act. — NOS4A2
Words don’t have the kind of causal power you claim they do. — NOS4A2
You chose to by your own volition. — NOS4A2
I understand the folk psychology of “influence”. You make decisions based on information you pick up from the environment and believe the information has effected you in some way, somehow forcing you to turn left. But there is zero physical evidence of this cause and effect. — NOS4A2
Not if I spoke a different language. Same meaning, same knowledge, different symbols. You understand these words because you’ve spent time learning the language. It is the effect of your learning, your self. — NOS4A2
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