I don't need to do what you ask of me. I've just given you an example of your thoughts being involuntarily influenced, and if you're intellectually honest, then you'll acknowledge that. End of.

You gave me an example of your question begging. End of.

Now, sincerely, can I get an example of thoughts and behavior being involuntarily influenced? — NOS4A2

Here

You gave me an example of your question begging. End of. — NOS4A2

You thought of the word "red". That was involuntary. And it was influenced by those words I typed up and submitted.

Why don't you just be honest and admit it, instead of denying it and trying to come up with a good comeback?

Maybe it’s me; I don’t see images unless I’m dreaming. My thinking process resembles an inner language as opposed to an inner picture book. — NOS4A2

Fine. I thought about that issue also. But still, to read something and to choose to construct the meanings of the words as they arrive would be, jeez, like threading needles or something. A kid learning to read must do it that way, just as a new driver has to think right foot here, shift there, check mirror, but after a while they can plan what to say to their boss and the body just handles the movements. If I am reading a science fiction book or an article on something new in physics (for lay people) or someone is telling me a ghost story, even if it involves new ideas, I don't choose to construct the meanings. This happens automatically, except in those fairly rare occasions that I must struggle to make sense of something, not just becaue it is new, but because it is odd or hard to imagine. But even novel ideas most of the time they just arise in my mind. I don't have to choose. And I certainly don't say no. I want to not have meaning arise in my mind, I have to close the book or look away.

If someone is telling me a story and I don't want to listen, I would have to work very, very hard to block out the story and all the meanings. I'd probably have to chant internally or count backwards fast from 100, just create a huge amount of noise to signal to stop my mind from generating meaning automatically.

And if you throw a ball at my head, I duck. In fact learning certain things like dance or how to stay in character I have to fight very hard to get out of habitual movements and reactions.

@Wittgenstein Did ten pages worth of spite answer your query, or do you require more?

Now, sincerely, can I get an example of thoughts and behavior being involuntarily influenced? — NOS4A2

Here, Here, Here are the most famous ones.

Here, Here, Here is some of the more up to date research that available without paywalls.

Where's your evidence?

I don’t think the meaning is constructed or generated on the fly, automatically or otherwise. To me, it’s more that the meaning is already there as a feature of the language. It doesn’t need to be constructed because I am already in possession of it.

Pick one and we can talk about it.

Pick one and we can talk about it. — NOS4A2

Read them already? Try...

Here, Here

Pick one and we can talk about it. — NOS4A2

Translation: pick one, and I can deny it and think up some basis to explain it away.

In a few that you presented the authors no doubt use the language of “influence”, that someone else’s words and actions determine our responses. But at the same time they discuss the psychological aspect of it, that the process is one occurring within the test subject.

Well, if someone starts talking to you about apes you will now be performing the act of thinking about apes. And the meanings of hte sentences will be part of the thoughts. Those particular sentences are not in there already, they will be constructed, though unconsciously, as they tell that story. The individual words and the rules of grammar are in there, but not that story.

So long as thinking ( also hearing, understanding, interpreting, “telling that story” etc.) is an act performed by me, I see no reason to dispute that. Without the rules of grammar or lexicon or even a shared language, however, we would not think about apes if we heard the word “ape”.

to prove you have complete control over your thoughts don’t think of a white bear for the rest of your life (I think further examples are redundant at this point but just wanted to chip in anyway).

to prove you have complete control over your thoughts don’t think of a white bear for the rest of your life (I think further examples are redundant at this point but just wanted to chip in anyway).

Are my thoughts not regulated or controlled or determined by some organism? Secondly, Am I or am I not that organism? If I am not that which controls my thoughts, what is?

Should be simple enough to answer.

ok

Are my thoughts not regulated or controlled or determined by some organism? — NOS4A2

Yes

Secondly, Am I or am I not that organism? — NOS4A2

No. You’re not. The conscious you is a part of the organism that controls your thoughts. Not all of it.

No. You’re not. The conscious you is a part of the organism that controls your thoughts. Not all of it.

I’m not much of a dualist so I think the notion of a conscious me and an unconscious me is a distinction without a difference. I’m the organism, the organism controls it’s own thoughts, therefor I control my own thoughts.

I’m not much of a dualist so I think the notion of a conscious me and an unconscious me is a distinction without a difference — NOS4A2

No difference? Try stopping your heart. Dualism doesn’t have much to do with conscious/subconscious anyway.

I’m the organism, the organism controls it’s own thoughts, therefor I control my own thoughts. — NOS4A2

I wouldn’t say the organism controls it’s own thoughts either conscious and subconscious together when environmental factors clearly influence it. Example: my comment significantly increased the likelihood you think of your reply. It doesn’t cause it, it helps cause it along with other factors

So long as thinking ( also hearing, understanding, interpreting, “telling that story” etc.) is an act performed by me, I see no reason to dispute that. Without the rules of grammar or lexicon or even a shared language, however, we would not think about apes if we heard the word “ape”. — NOS4A2

Sure, but I thought the whole idea was that you choose to make meanings. That someone saying 'the ape is on the loose' has no affect on you unless you choose to construct a meaning. I am disagreeing and saying that it immediately has effects on you before you can choose to make that sentence have meaning. This is going back to the blue elephant. Perhaps you do not have a visual response to language, but you have a meaning response to language.

I am not saying that you are an empty vessel. Sure, of course, you know language. That's not the issue. It is not a skill or knowledge issue. It has to do with you not deciding to decode sounds. It happens automatically.

I see what you’re saying.

I suppose the issue I have is the so-called effect of the words, when clearly the effect—hearing, constructing meaning, decoding sounds—has only me as it’s cause. Once the sound or word enters my domain, so to speak, it is under the control of my processes whether automatic or not.

I see what you’re saying.

I suppose the issue I have is the so-called effect of the words, when clearly the effect—hearing, constructing meaning, decoding sounds—has only me as it’s cause. Once the sound or word enters my domain, so to speak, it is under the control of my processes whether automatic or not. — NOS4A2

Sure, and thanks for working with what I am saying and nuancing your responses. I mean, this should be the rule, but it's actually rather rare. Like, well, we're having a conversation. Yeah, I get that. I would not want to say that what happens next is purely caused by the other person. But if we spread out their speech act to a large group, let's say kids.

So, a camp counselor tells some extremely scary ghost stories to the kids and 4% have horrible nightmares, I think we might consider it reasonable for parents to ask the camp to have an policy against that kind of story telling. Each child's mind/brain does, yes, become causal in what it does with the stories that arise in their minds when the storyteller tells the story. But, then coming at it from another angle, parents might not want their suseptible kids to have bad experiences and other parents are upset that their kids are being woken up by the screaming of the suseptible kids.

Now this is kids, so maybe that seems unfair in the context of hate speech which is usually about speech acts between adults, though not always. But at root we are dealing with X contributing to more cases of Y. If we don't like Y, well it's a reasonable option to consider stopping or limiting X.

Of course this depends on other effects of limiting X and how well we can show that X leads to more cases of Y.

But at the root level of causes it can make sense to make certain policy decisions, despite the truth of what you are saying: that your brain and mind work with the stimulus and create meaning (or images or emotion, etc.)

To be honest I haven’t really fleshed out the idea yet, so I appreciate the valid responses. I sincerely want to figure this out and enjoy trying to do so.

Children are sponges when it comes to the environment. If they are in an environment with more X there will be a higher likelihood of Y. I agree.

It’s difficult to argue against censorship when it comes to children because I think a parent is a legit authority fully capable of deciding what a child can or cannot say or hear, for the reasons you stated. Given that a child is in the midst of his development, it seems prudent to protect him from certain aspects of the environment, including speech. I don’t think that sort of authority and authoritarianism can extend to adults, however, and freedom rather than censorship should be the rule.

Both censorship and freedom of speech can lead to the distortion of truth, but only one offers an honorable and dignified environment for bringing it back out again.

I think of the entire history of human expression and feel a sense of loss because of what was stolen or destroyed because someone didn’t like it. We might all be Epicureans right now if his work wasn’t largely missing. Where would science be if someone didn’t discover De Rerum Natura collecting dust in some monastery? Hell, Even Nazi propaganda is in a museum.

My main assertion is that the concrete artifacts of human expression—words, paintings, books, and the like—are completely blameless. I believe that education and critical thinking is a far better antidote to hatred than censorship. We can’t rid the world of bigotry and intolerance by evoking it.

Rereading some of this I came across this quote right here. I thought you kept saying that the mind is physical no? — khaled

In other words, I was seeing whether you were asserting determinism, or at least asserting that mind doesn't phenomenally involve free will.

Also your definition of free will is basically equivalent to saying that mental processes don’t have predetermined results. — khaled

Correct.

So, if one could prove that hate speech makes violence more likely — khaled

First, that wouldn't be possible, because empirical claims are not provable period.

Secondly, aside from proof, "X makes y more likely" isn't a statement of causality

Where each factor contributed to “biasing the probability” (as you said in the free will thread). — khaled

On my view only causality matters.

That someone saying 'the ape is on the loose' has no affect on you unless you choose to construct a meaning. — Coben

I wasn't following this latest tangent (I'm going to be pretty busy for awhile), but on my view, you have to intentionally construct meaning, but that doesn't imply that on all subsequent occasions it's something you need to make a conscious effort to do.

It's similar to something like learning how to drive. At first, you need to consciously think about everything you're doing, and you need to figure out how to do it. After you've done it a bit, though, you no longer need to think about it to do it. That doesn't imply that it's not something you're doing.

I think I even used the driving analogy - heck it might be more or less the same thing - myself a few posts ago.

After you've done it a bit, though, you no longer need to think about it to do it. That doesn't imply that it's not something you're doing. — Terrapin Station

The beginning of this tangent was about someone making a choice to construct the image blue elephant if someone said it. I thought this was far fetched that one chooses to make the image, though I agree that one does that. Some part of the organism does that, in most fairly easy to make images, unconsciously. Since S said he didn't see images, I shifted to meaning. That people say sentences to us does not lead us to make the choice to discern each word and pull out a meaning from the sentence. We do that. But I wouldn't say it is a choice and certainly not a conscious choice, most of the time. Now this is a very tiny slice of interaction. So far we are a long way from hate speech causing violence. But since he was drawing a line at such a fundamental level, I decided to probe and question that.

I think this is relevent to the debate because, for example, there have been all sorts of experiments done using priming. Exposing people to all sorts of stimuli: colors, temperature changes, words, stories
before they do a task or have an interaction with other people changes how that group will perform against control groups. And in predictable ways. IOW there is a statistical influence at a non-conscious level on how we treat other people (and how well we do on tests, for example). A bit like the experiment where they primed teachers, though it's more than priming, selecting two similar groups of students and telling the teachers one was a group of weak students, the others good students and the latter not only were evaluated as better by the teachers but performed better. Though, again, statistically.

When the elephant thing first came up, I pointed out that it's still something the receiver has to basically choose (I'm saying "basically" because it's not necessarily something you're thinking about as a choice, but it's a matter of willfully orienting yourself towards it in particular ways). You have to focus on the utterance, you have to think about it a particular semantic way, and if we're talking about picturing things, you need to willfully direct yourself for that, too.

An example of this that a lot of people are familiar with is this: when I listen to music--and I know many other people who do this, too (although maybe most of them are musicians)--I only rarely parse lyrics (so parse vocals) semantically. Most of the time I hear lyrics/vocals so that they might as well be an instrument like a trumpet or a saxophone. I listen to melody, phrasing, timbre, etc. In order to parse lyrics/vocals semantically when I listen to music, I have to make an effort to focus on that aspect.

First, that wouldn't be possible, because empirical claims are not provable period. — Terrapin Station

Shooting someone causes them to die is an empirical claim but we can't prove that so I guess shooting people is fine herpa derp.

Secondly, aside from proof, "X makes y more likely" isn't a statement of causality — Terrapin Station

No but X, A,B,C and D simultaneously cause Y is a statement of causality no? I'm saying X can be hate speech and Y violence

On my view only causality matters. — Terrapin Station

But you said before that multiple things can cause an event at the same time right? So if the event in question has multiple causes as such should individual causes be legally punishable?

If A B and C cause bad thing D then should someone who did A be punished if D happens?

Something should only be punishable if it has one cause only? A => D?

I'm tired of going over the same stuff again and again.

Shooting someone causes them to die is an empirical claim but we can't prove that — khaled

Since empirical claims are not provable, it's not something to bother with. I'm not saying anything at all about proof in any of these comments. Proof has nothing at all to do with knowing empirical claims. Is that understandable?

I'm not saying anything at all about proof in any of these comments — Terrapin Station

What was the point of this quote then?

First, that wouldn't be possible, because empirical claims are not provable period. — Terrapin Station