How can a law possibly limit free speech? A law is just speech from the government. You said speech can’t cause anything so it can’t limit anything.

See? You can’t say that in this discussion.

You have to make your point some other way or just concede you are not making sense saying words don’t cause actions. Right?

Do you believe laws cause your actions?

All of it has to do with free speech, whether restrictive or absolute. You care more about free speech than most, so I applaud you for that, but once you limit free speech it is no longer free speech. It’s censorship. It’s either one or the other. Take your pick.

And if the US constitution was amended tomorrow stating that you had to walk around with your hand down your pants you would do it, given that the words cause your actions.

And if they changed the laws tomorrow you would dutifully follow it, given that the words cause your actions.

Police follow the code book.

If you want I can limit our discussion to politics.

Do you believe Article 19 of the Declaration of human rights?

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Laws matter because they are enforced by the monopoly on violence. If the words written in laws simply made you abide by them, by sheer force of how they were written, there would be no need for police and jail. The fear of violence and being kidnapped by police is what moves people to abide by them.

Call me what you want. You know I already said words have no more effect than any other articulated sound from the mouth. Also, this text has no more effect on the body than this text: durioenzbdifllsbdb.

I think you're saying that those of us who support some restrictions on speech are basing this on false beliefs about the effects of the speech. Is that correct?

That is correct.

And if so, do you agree this is the pivotal issue? Can you please attempt to state exactly what false beliefs we hold, in objective terms, rather than with judgemental terms?

I do believe it is a pivotal issue. I’m not sure if this pertains to you personally, but the false belief I believe some people hold or imply is that words possess some sort of power or force over and above their medium.

Also state your position on free will. Do you believe humans possess libertarian free will? Reading some of your exchange with @Michael, this seems relevant.

I do believe in so-called libertarian free will for the simple reason that nothing else can be shown to determine our actions.

No, I'm a compatibilist.

Your position, though, is unclear. You're a free will libertarian but also an eliminative materialist. I assume, then, that you believe that libertarian free will is made possible by quantum indeterminancy? So we "could have done otherwise" only because the applicable human behaviour operates according to probabilistic causation rather than determinism?

I don’t know enough about quantum mechanics to have a position on quantum indeterminacy. What I believe is that each of us are the source of our own actions, and indeed identical to our own actions.

And the infrared sensor sends electrical signals to some other part of the TV. But it's still the case that I cause the TV to turn on by pushing the appropriate button on the remote. Your reasoning is a non sequitur, even despite your assertions that humans, unlike TVs, have "agency" – because this "agency" does not factor into the behaviour of our sense organs in response to stimulation, e.g. I can't just will myself to be deaf (even if I can will myself to cover my ears).

I’ve already conceded that the environment stimulates our sense organs, simply due to the fact that they collide, and have factored it in. But that’s where their influence ends. in the case of hearing or reading, the words do not exert enough force on the body to move it in the way you say it does. It has neither the mass nor the energy to do so. All the energy and systems required to move the body comes from the body. That’s why hearing and reading are capacities of the body, and not soundwaves. That’s why I say words cannot determine, govern, or control our responses.

I do like it, yes. As of now, my own statism goes so far as the so-called “night-watchman state”. It should defend rights and make justice accessible. Beyond that it should not go. Plus a parade in support of soldiers and veterans is a good thing, in my opinion.

A lot of work and thought went into this Baden. Kudos.

I must admit I struggled with the jargon a little bit and had to look up some terms, but after some effort on my part I made it through. Obviously it wasn’t written for a working-class schlubs and laymen such as myself, but I imagine other critical theorists would approve. At any rate, there was a lot to think about and I felt elevated having read it.

I’ve been reading about “autopoiesis” for the past while (Principles of Biological Autonomy, by Valera, and Biological Autonomy, by Morena) as it pertains to individual biological autonomy, so it’s cool to see it presented in a sociological context.

Cheers

One was the celebration of a 250 year anniversary that much of the press tried to pooh-pooh. The other was a hissy fit much of the press tried to glorify. Not really the same at all, chap.

Pundits have been arguing that Trump’s diplomatic efforts were a ruse to deceive Iran, leaving them with their guard down and vulnerable to attack. But diplomacy isn’t dead and both Iran and US is still willing to make a deal.

If war is diplomacy by other means, diplomacy is never finished. While Israel and Iran are in the midst of what could be an extended war that could spread, the possibility of renewed talks to deal with Iran’s expanding nuclear program should not be discounted.

Negotiations are on hold while the war continues, and the future of diplomacy is far from clear. Iran will feel compelled to respond to Israel, and the Israeli campaign could last for days or weeks. For now Washington does not appear to be doing anything to press both sides to stop the violence and start talking again.

But the Iranians say they still want a deal, as does President Trump. The shape of future talks will inevitably depend on when and how the fighting stops.

“We are prepared for any agreement aimed at ensuring Iran does not pursue nuclear weapons,” the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told foreign diplomats in Tehran on Sunday. But his country would not accept any deal that “deprives Iran of its nuclear rights,” he added, including the right to enrich uranium, albeit at low levels that can be used for civilian purposes.

Mr. Araghchi said Israel did not attack to pre-empt Iran’s race toward a bomb, which Iran denies trying to develop, but to derail negotiations on a deal that Mr. Netanyahu opposes.

The attacks are “an attempt to undermine diplomacy and derail negotiations,” he continued, a view shared by various Western analysts. “It is entirely clear that the Israeli regime does not want any agreement on the nuclear issue,” he said. “It does not want negotiations and does not seek diplomacy.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/15/world/middleeast/diplomacy-with-iran-is-damaged-not-dead.html

Could the theory that Netanyahu attacked Iran to undermine diplomatic efforts be true? After all, they did attack just days before talks were supposed to happen.

Man, the organizers and all their acolytes in the press tried really hard to get people to notice the No Kings protest, and everyone has already forgotten about it. It’s performative and cathartic stunts like these that have rendered protesting largely ineffectual. What a shame.

And as I have explained, this is a misguided understanding of causation. I cause the bomb to explode by pushing a button, I cause the machine to turn by telling it to, the fly causes the Venus flytrap to close by moving its hairs.

The relationship between each pair of events isn't merely correlation. It's not an accident or happenstance or coincidence. It's causal.

My sense organs send electrical signals to my brain because they have been stimulated. If they do so for any other reason, e.g entirely caused by internal, biological activity, then that's a sign of an injury.

You’re a determinist. The choice to put yourself as the cause in all these events is completely arbitrary and linear, as any and all anterior states caused you to push the button, and therefor explode the bomb. You have no control or will over anything. Isn’t that so?

Your sense organs send electrical signals to your brain. Nothing else in the universe does that. Nothing else is reading the words you’re reading, thinking the thoughts you’re thinking, sending the impulses you’re sending, moving your body, and responding to words the way you do. While I might be misguided about the philosophy of causation, you’re doing, controlling, determining, governing, creating, catalyzing, producing, generating, evoking those acts, and no one else can do so.

The pundits are saying Israel doesn't have the ability to disarm Iran by itself. They want the US to join in to finish the job. Trump appears to be bored by the notion.

Never doubt the neocons. But Trump had already urged Netanyahu not to attack a day or so before the attack happened, and to end the war in Gaza. And obviously this turn of events ruins the diplomatic talks between US and Iran which were supposed to happen tomorrow, I think. It threatens the Abraham Accords. I imagine Trump is pissed at Netanyahu. Hopefully this episode will further disentangle the US from that government.

They said that Israel used the drone-on-trucks technique, the same thing Ukraine did just a few weeks earlier, both of which took years of planning. Is the common denominator between these two parties the CIA? Mossad?

Israel urges U.S. to join war with Iran to eliminate nuclear program

An Israeli official claimed to Axios that the U.S. might join the operation, and that President Trump even suggested he'd do so if necessary in a recent conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A White House official denied that on Friday. A second U.S. official confirmed on Saturday that Israel has urged the Trump administration to join the war, but said currently the administration is not considering it.

A senior White House official told Axios Saturday that "whatever happens today cannot be prevented," referring to Israel's attacks.

"But we have the ability to negotiate a successful peaceful resolution to this conflict if Iran is willing. The fastest way for Iran to accomplish peace is to give up its nuclear weapons program," the senior official added.

What they're saying: "The entire operation... really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordow," Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter told Fox News on Friday.

Israeli officials have raised the idea of U.S. participation to take out Fordow with U.S. counterparts since Israel's operation began.
An Israeli source said the U.S. is considering the request and stressed Israel hopes Trump agrees.

https://www.axios.com/2025/06/14/israel-iran-war-us-nuclear-program-trump

Watch, now they’ll want the US to join the Isreali campaign to avoid the cognitive dissonance involved in their narrative.

The military parade is amazing. There should be one every year.

The news also says he was targeting abortion clinics. Not necessarily a hard-left cause. I guess we’ll see his motives from the manifesto he was reportedly carrying.

So you don't accept that the fly's movements cause the Venus flytrap to close its jaws and you don't accept that spoken words can cause a voice-activated machine to lift some weight.

This just isn't the "superstitious imply[ing] a physics of magical thinking that contradicts basic reality" as you accuse it of being. It's the truth, and common sense. And if this is your best defence of free speech absolutism then so much the worse for your position.

I’ve already stated my reasoning. The effects cannot be shown to reach as far as you say they do. The objects, structures, and energies responsible for such movements, responses, and actions are not the same as the ones you claim they are. There is no argument for censorship save for superstition and magical thinking.

I don’t know, man, you might be right. But Personally, I would wait until all is investigated. It could be some disgruntled cop trying to discredit the protests for all we know.

And the fly causes it to close. The two are not mutually exclusive. Exactly like with machines.

I’m not so sure about that.

You're not addressing what I'm saying. I’m saying that even if we have libertarian free will, this could-have-done-otherwise agency does not apply to our heartbeats and does not apply to our sense organs, and so there’s no good reason to say that the behaviour of our sense organs is not causally determined by some stimulus and its source.

The problem is you cannot point to anything else that determines sensing and heart-beating. So I fully dispute and disagree with what you’re saying.

[quote
] Why not? Do you reject the claim that my speech can cause a voice-activated forklift to lift a heavy weight?[/quote]

I utterly reject it and for the same reasons I reject it your other analogies.

Autonomous robot.

Again, all of the have been programmed and built by humans, and therefor are dependent on human input.

It’s the 250 year anniversary of the US Army and it will be marked by a parade. Many in the press erroneously call it “Trump’s parade”, despite the official name. They have to do this and essentially lie in order to maintain a narrative they spent the better part of decade building. The anti-Trump propagandists have already framed it as a parade in the style of Kim Jung Un, or some other dictator, and not something someone might see on Bastille Day. So I’m kind of hoping the mindless and thoughtless protesters show up to disrupt it, given that every time they put on such a show the rest of us get more-and-more inclined to ignore it.

In the spirit of conformity and catharsis they organized a multi-city protest to coincide with the parade, once again using the “Trump thinks he’s a king” narrative to fuel their live-action roleplay. It’s called the “No Kings” protest, a name about the average length of an anti-Trump activist’s incredulity. Bernie Sanders, donning his tricorn hat and advertising for the event, even made overtures to 1776 in an X post (the fact of which is verboten here). These are the kind of fantasies their politicians exploit for power, donor-dollars, and votes.

Perhaps funnier was the recent political theater put on by a Democrat senator. He disrupted a Kristi Noem press conference and tried to shove himself up to the stage to confront her, but was stopped and eventually pushed out of the event by security, taken down and cuffed. Afterwords, when speaking to the press, he started crying about it, literally. In unison the party pretended this event was an example of authoritarianism, not their own emotional and often violent outbursts, fuelled as they are by their own imaginations. We’ll see if any of this happens today, and I must admit I’m kind of looking forward to it.

It didn’t work, though. The rules of the deal never changed and was still in place.

I'll leave you to guess what happened before 2019 that led to that happening.

Apparently pallets of cash for a whole lot of nothing. There were other signatories. They were foolish for staying in a deal which Iran would eventually break.

According to the UN, Iran basically broke that deal.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/06/1164291

USAID Official and Three Corporate Executives Plead Guilty to Decade-Long Bribery Scheme Involving Over $550 Million in Contracts; Two Companies Admit Criminal Liability for Bribery Scheme and Securities Fraud

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/usaid-official-and-three-corporate-executives-plead-guilty-decade-long-bribery-scheme

Crazy.

House passes DOGE cuts to USAID, NPR, and PBS. If it passes the senate it looks like the opposition will no longer be able to use tax-payer dollars to fund their propaganda.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-12/house-passes-doge-cuts-to-pbs-npr-aid-in-win-for-musk-trump?srnd=phx-politics

Are you saying that the fly walking inside a Venus flytrap does not cause the Venus flytrap's jaw to close?

If the action potential is in the plant, then yes, the biology of the flytrap causes it to close if and when such a stimulus happens.

So?

That means they are not autonomous.

They can if we build them that way. But also: so?

But the fact that we have to build them, program them, etc negates their autonomy.

But the heart beat is not an application of agent-causal libertarian free will. And neither is the sense organ's response to stimuli. So there is no good reason to claim that the behaviour of the sense organs in response to stimulation is any less determined than the behaviour of a radio receiver in response to stimulation. You can't simply hand-wave this away by saying that in other circumstances the organism does have agency.

I can and will hand wave it until you can show that something else in the universe beats the heart. Until then there is nothing else that can be shown to determine the heart beat.

Taking a step back for a moment, and re-addressing this, do you at least accept that my speech can cause a voice-activated forklift to lift a heavy weight, and so that the above comment of yours is completely misguided?

I do not accept it.

You're equivocating. It is true that the human organism is responsible for its heart beat and digestion but it is not prima facie true that its heart beat and digestion is an example of agent-causal libertarian free will, comparable to the supposedly could-have-done-otherwise decision to either have Chinese or Indian for dinner.

So even if you want to consider humans – but not plants and machines – as being agents, its agency does not prima facie apply to everything the body does.

You need to do more than simply assert that humans are agents to defend the claim that the behaviour of the sense organs is an application of agency and not simply a causal reaction to stimuli.

I never said it was an application of agency. I used “agency” to distinguish between the human being and your analogies. But the fact remains that the heart beat and digestion is caused by this same agent. So it is with the operation and maintenance with everything else occurring in the body.

And the same is true of the Venus flytrap and the remote control car (albeit with machinery in place of biology).

Venus flytraps, yes, but machines no. Machines are designed, built, and operated by human beings. They cannot change their own batteries or plug themselves in.

You the entire planet Earth and all living things. It’s basically what you said.

I thought you wanted social breakdown in the US. Didn't you?

Where do you come up with this stuff?

This is a vacuous answer. You can’t simply assert that because the human organism as a whole can “choose to do otherwise” then the behaviour of its sense organs is not causally influenced by a stimulus and its source.

Even the interactionist dualist accepts that some of the body’s behaviour is not “agent-caused”, e.g our heartbeats and digestive systems.

I’m not a dualist. The behavior of the sense organs, the brain, the nervous system etc. is the behavior of the whole. I reiterate this because pretending one and then the other are discreet units outside of the scope and control of the whole is abstract nonsense.

If not the agent, then what causes the heart beat and digestion? Is the Sinoatrial node a foreign parasite or something? Like I said, abstract nonsense.

And how do you maintain this whilst endorsing eliminative materialism? Agents are physical systems and agency is a physical process and like every other physical system and physical process in the universe its behaviour can be and is causally influenced by physical systems and physical processes external to itself, whether that be deterministic causation or probabilistic causation (e.g quantum indeterminacy).

In the case of human sensing, the transduction of one form of energy to another, as in the conversion of outside stimulus to internal chemical and electrical signals, is performed by the human organism. No external system involved in the event of listening performs such an action. And when I look at what changes the force of a soundwave can possibly cause inside the human body the effects are exactly the ones I said the were and no more. Past the transduction, that force is simply no longer present and therefor neither is its “influence”. There is no soundwave or words banging around in there like billiard balls.

All subsequent movements occur due to the potential energy stored in the system itself, in this case the body, as determined by the internal process by which your body expends energy and burns calories. The energy and ability to move, or do the work involved in listening, or speaking, or any activity, is converted, stored, and used by the body and no other system. It determines any and all activity involved, and in fact is physically identical to that activity.

What does it mean to “move on their own accord”? Does the Venus flytrap closing its jaws “move on its own accord”? Does the robot left to its own devices to navigate a maze “move on its own accord”?

It just means autonomy: the energy and force required to move is provided by that which is moving, generated by itself, and wholly determined by the biology, not by external forces.

Why is that relevant? Matter is matter. All physical systems operate according to the same physical laws.

You are engaging in special pleading when you assert that “the entity takes over” applies to human organisms but not machines (and not plants?).

Physical systems vary in properties and behavior. Why would that be irrelevant?

Firstly, are you arguing against determinism and in favour of libertarian free will? If so, how do you maintain this whilst also endorsing eliminative materialism?

I don’t need to believe in non-physical substances to believe objects can move on their own accord.

Which are you endorsing? If the latter then we’re still dealing with causal influence, albeit probabilistic causation.

I’m inclined towards sourcehood arguments and agent-causation of libertarian free will.

Secondly, where does decision-making occur? In the inner ear? Or later in the “higher-level” brain activity? If the latter then you must at least accept that the causal power of stimuli extends beyond the immediate interaction with the sense organs, being causally responsible for the signals sent to the brain and the behaviour of “lower-level” neurons.

I consider the body to be one holistic system. It is only this system in its entirety that decides, or can decide.

The same is true of the machine with a radio receiver. But it’s still the case that if I send it the appropriate radio signal, e.g telling it to self destruct, then I am causally influencing its behaviour.

The fact that the human body and sense organs are organic matter and not metal is of no relevance.

But you set up the receiver and bomb. You programmed it to self destruct. It didn’t grow organically and learn to deal with the environment and others through years of experience and learning. It cannot choose to do otherwise should it desire to do so. You have no such influence over human beings as you would over a radio receiver.

The "protests" are spreading to other cities. It looks like Americans are in for another “summer of love”, just like in 2020.

The question is “why”? Why do Americans have to suffer yet again the destruction of their cities, the people in their roadways, the curfews, the violence and looting, the waving of foreign flags on American streets?

It’s not like there hasn’t been mass deportations before. Over 3 million individuals were removed from the country during the Obama administration. In 2013 alone over 83% were expelled without due process. Where were the activist judges? Where were the highly-televised protests and riots then?

Not only that, but around 1500 “No Kings” protests are planned across the country on June 14th, coinciding with the Army’s 250th birthday and the military parade. Why? I suspect the anti-Trump imagination sees in its soy-colored narrative the military parades of Russia or China, soldiers goose-stepping about, and assume Trump was inspired with his dictatorial aspirations. But the inspiration came from watching France's popular Bastille Day parade.

And of course, like everything, Trump is to blame. The great demiurge has entered the brains of rioters and now moves them like marionettes to inflict violence upon their countrymen. It's going to be an eventful summer!

This whole foray in LA is amazing in its effects. Anti-Trumpism has reduced them to defending illegals, MS-13 members, mobs waving foreign flags, riots, law breaking, and routine violence.

I am saying that NOS4A2's claim that speech has no causal power beyond the immediate transfer of kinetic energy in the inner ear is a complete misunderstanding of causation.

You might be right; I do have issues with causation. But you furtively leave out the body as much as you can. You don’t mention that it is the body that does the listening. In fact, the body does all the work: produces all the components required, converts all the energy, guides the impulses to their destination, directs each and every subsequent bodily movement long after the sound wave has had any impression. Sound waves do none of that stuff.

To get back on point, no government should regulate whatever I am saying now and whatever you said or might say in response to me.

But if you and I were conspiring to commit murder, just flinging murderous thoughts and plans at each other, and one of us takes one affirmative step according to those plans, like buying guns or something, then both of us could be charged with conspiracy to commit murder and potentially jailed, not for buying the guns, but for the words we shared as the reason for buying the guns.

That would be government regulating speech but because of its consequences, not because of its content.

What consequence? You haven’t murdered anyone. It’s true, you definitely could be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, even though your crime is moving your mouth and breath in certain ways as to form sounds called words, which harmed exactly nothing; but that’s indicative of how superstitious man is.