words can cause thoughts, thoughts can cause urges to perform actions which are harmful to oneself, such urges can cause actions which are harmful to oneself. There’s no claim that any of these things is particularly likely, just that they’re possible, and if they’re all possible, then it’s possible for words to cause harm
Without having an object level opinion here (I didn’t read the post and I only skimmed the comments), I note that this argument is incomplete. It may be that the set of “urges that cause harmful actions” is disjoint from the set of “urges which can be caused by thoughts which can be caused by words”.
Without having an object level opinion here (I didn’t read the post and I only skimmed the comments), I note that this argument is incomplete. It may be that the set of “urges that cause harmful actions” is disjoint from the set of “urges which can be caused by thoughts which can be caused by words”.
That’s a fair objection. I encourage you to look at the Appendix for some abstracted examples if you happen to find yourself interested.