Everyday Irrationality: Conflation of Cause and Effect
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Original Question
If you've been paying attention to Twitter lately (a showcase for the Latest and Greatest in Failures of Human Cognition) you'll have noticed the claim that certain forms of speech can be considered "violence". Not just "violent", but a form of violence.
Saying something is now violent.
Hmm.
Now to steelman, I can see a logical progression in their line of reasoning, though I ultimately deem it to be flawed.
P1: Y expresses hatred against a protected group.
P2: Hatred leads to violence.
P3: Therefore, Y leads to violence.
C2: Therefore, Y is violence.
Did you guys catch the Non Sequitur? It's jarring, and it's in P3 -> C2. Because Y (cause) leads to violence (effect), Y is violence. However, this is as absurd as claiming that, since smoking can lead to cancer, smoking is cancer. This is patently untrue; one is a rather unhealthy habit, the other is a group of fatal diseases. It is possible to smoke and not get cancer, and it is possibly to get cancer having not smoked (I know this...too well.)
That being said, am I being facetious and unfair here?
'Violence' could legitimately have another meaning. Rather than simply looking at cause-and-effect, the social justice crowd are looking at wider systems of power and human relations. They may observe that hate speech can cause members of vulnerable groups to feel unwelcome in their communities. This lack of welcoming could lead to a lack of belonging. Humans have a primal need to belong (which is why ostracism is so painful) and so a loss of self-esteem could occur as a result - and that is a common trait among those with depression, those in society most likely...to die by suicide. Words, in this way, have led to violence.
The most striking flaw of the above steelman is the probabilistic nature of the argument. It's all "could", "might", "may", etc. Fluffiness makes the statement less convincing. Also, consider the possibility that speech could be an Incomplete/Insignificant Cause; since it is only one contributor to a complex, intersecting with things like diminished esteem from being in the minority, insecure financial situation, etc.
Do you agree with my analysis?
Answers
3We need to tread between forcing definitions and equivocating, but as far as I can see the definition includes the word physical and these claims are simply wrong.
To say "Hate speech is violence" is not an argument, it is a statement of fact, or opinion, that can be disputed. The standard definition considers "violence" to be only physical. But I can argue, for example, that hate speech produces psychological and physical harm and should therefore be considered a form of violence, and if we can agree on that then the dictionary definition should be changed (that's two arguments). Consider cases we've seen of hate speech on the internet lately, and try and tell me that when you see little kids crying, or you see the physiological results of the psychological reactions of fear and anger, that such speech did not cause real harm, even if physical violence did not occur. The disagreement is about the definition of the term "violence", and even though the term has a specific definition in the standard dictionary, such definitions do change over time, and as Bo pointed out, some dictionaries have already expanded the definition.
IMHO, this is what makes the English language so beautiful, as it can evolve and change with the times, easily assimilates words from other languages, and provides a substantially greater vocabulary than any other language in the world.
I don't now the etymology of the word "violence," but many dictionaries now include "words" as part of violence (see https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/violence ). So no argument needs to be made or justified. Of course, a debate can be had about the problems of expanding the definition, but it appears it has been done.
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