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The quoted argument may be true, but it is not sufficient to argue that psychologically damaging someone is violence. It's a bit like affirming the consequence
by finnthehuman 6y ago
The quoted argument may be true, but it is not sufficient to argue that psychologically damaging someone is violence.
It's a bit like affirming the consequence. If we posit that (physical) violence causes damage, and that a person can be psychologically damaged, it's not a strong argument to work backwards that anything that causes damage is violence.
With that path of logic I could also say: pan-frying food causes it to become cooked, therefore pan-frying is a form of broiling.
We're talking about language so of course we can overload the word "violence" to mean more than exclusively physical acts.
But without hard and fast boundaries, it becomes harder to communicate. And this article is talking about a reduction in clarity to a classification.
We can expect to find that for some number of people, their moral and legislative opinions about "violence" are strictly limited to physical acts. You may disagree with those people, and that's fine. But we can't change their opinions just by unilaterally altering the descriptive boundaries of the words they use to express their opinions.
- mdszy 6y agoThere's a really funny thing about language, it's fascinating really: All words are made up.
- naasking 6y agoAll words are made up, but all meaning is not.
- blotter_paper 6y agoStrongly disagree.
- naasking 6y ago1 + 1 = 2 Is the meaning of this statement independent of the symbols used? Can the meaning be found in nature, outside of our minds, or is it an artifact of our minds or language?
- blotter_paper 6y agoI wouldn't say that being found in nature means that something is not made up. Issus coleoptratus evolved gears long before humans invented them, yet gears seem purely phenomenal -- I wouldn't expect the noumenon to have anything directly corresponding to gears in it, "gear" is just a useful concept we have that lets us categorize part of an insect or a bicycle (both of which are made up themselves, of course). There may be discrete math in the noumenon, but I'm not convinced of that. For all I know the noumenon could be dealing in something else entirely, and math might just be a really useful tool we came up with (like classical physics, and probably modern physics). Math is the simplest case you can make, but I don't see a compelling reason to accept it as a given.
- naasking 6y ago> I wouldn't say that being found in nature means that something is not made up. Then define "made up". > For all I know the noumenon could be dealing in something else entirely, and math might just be a really useful tool we came up with (like classical physics, and probably modern physics). Suppose it is merely a useful tool. This tool then necessarily has a structure that's isomorphic to part of the structure of the noumenon, otherwise it wouldn't actually be a useful tool. Therefore, whatever structure it models is itself mind independent, as I said. The symbols and formalisms we use are interchangeable, but the structure revealed is not.
- blotter_paper 6y ago>Then define "made up". That which is not a part of base reality. If base reality were operating using the same rules as Conway's game of life then cells would be real, but gliders would be made up. Since Conway's game of life actually runs in a simulation on some computer or another, cells are also made up. >Suppose it is merely a useful tool. This tool then necessarily has a structure that's isomorphic to part of the structure of the noumenon, otherwise it wouldn't actually be a useful tool. Newton's equations are now accepted as an approximation; they are not isomorphic to part of the structure of the noumenon, yet remain useful when firing cannons. Myths and legends have been useful in compelling people to wage wars and donate to charities, yet we do not suppose that this usefulness means they are isomorphic to part of the structure of the noumenon. Perhaps fermions and bosons correspond very closely to real parts of the noumenon, but they could also be a phenomenon which is emergent on top of something else -- as made up as chemistry, biology, psychology, and economics.