Do Words Hurt?

Wang Tang
reply to post by BDBinc

 

It was worth a try to have a reasonable argument on this topic but clearly this is impossible. You are just twisting the meaning of my words to suit your point of view. I suppose I am partially to blame for not articulating my view with enough clarity. Regardless you are clearly entrenched in your view and no expression of sound logical reasoning will move you so I'll take this as my cue to remove myself from this discussion.

What I'm trying to say is hurtful words are only hurtful in context, as without the mind (or the person) they are not existent and therefore not hurtful.
Yes words that are not used deliberately to verbally abuse persons do not carry the inherent property of being pain-causing. But the point was that abusive words can hurt not that kind caring (or all words ) always hurt. That is a choice in how we relate to ourself/ others.

If you took all the words out of context the meaning and intent would be lost that is not how most vindictive verbal abuse is done. If you scramble a word it is just letters.

In your post either take responsibility for lack of clarity, if you believe you have failed to articulate clearly, OR give up and accuse me of twisting what you said( I did not and I have quoted you) your two points contradict each other. One is blame and one is taking responsibility.
My "point of view" is that I KNOW verbal abuse and hurtful words can hurt the person . I have experienced it.

BDBinc


In your post either take responsibility for lack of clarity, if you believe you have failed to articulate clearly, OR give up and accuse me of twisting what you said( I did not and I have quoted you) your two points contradict each other. One is blame and one is taking responsibility.
My "point of view" is that I KNOW verbal abuse and hurtful words can hurt the person . I have experienced it.

You are right. I rescind my blame and take full responsibility and concede to you that your argument is right.

reply to post by BDBinc

Again like LM's argument you are separating meaning from words, trying to take them as letters without meanings to be taken out of context.

I'll try to explain this again BDBinc in the hopes that you can understand what I mean. I have gone over this, but I understand it is difficult to pour through many pages of thread to find it.

When we speak a word, it is impossible to think that "meaning" travels in the sound waves to the one hearing it. If there was meaning in words, we could look at any word and understand what it means, simply by observing its meaning. This is why we have translators. The meaning is in the one speaking it, and the one hearing it, but not in the articulation of sounds or arrangement of letters in a book, aka a word.

However, a word is not a word in someone's mind. It is a thought. A word must be written down or articulated in order to exist as a word. Until then, and after then, it is a thought in someone's mind. In that case, the meaning of the word is learned or created and associated with thoughts.

As a thought experiment, I just invented a word and I know what it means. The word is "Dwh". It would be preposterous to think that that word has any meaning to anyone, nonetheless I know what it means. I know what it means because I have created a meaning for it, and if I was to teach someone the word, they would have been taught the meaning. Before I typed the letters of that word, it is a thought. And when someone is taught the word, it becomes a thought. Outside of thought, the word is pixels on a screen, or scratches on paper, there is no symbolism until it graces someone's mind. It means nothing unless someone is there giving it meaning. That is how I have separated meaning from words.

Meaning exists in thought only, but can be projected upon actual things, such as words. This is what I mean by giving words power, because in a sense we elevate an arraignment of letters or sounds to something more powerful than it is, even to the point of saying these sounds and letters cause us pain. But if the meaning is in our thoughts, and not in the word, then it goes to follow that the pain is not from the word, but how we give them meaning.

reply to post by Wang Tang

I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself too clearly, but it seemed like you guys were arguing past each other and then resorting to personal attacks when both sides didn't seem to engage the other's argument, so I'm just trying to bring us back to reasoned arguments.

You're a breath of fresh air Wang Tang. You have expressed quite clearly what I've been trying to say all along.

You are right. I rescind my blame and take full responsibility and concede to you that your argument is right.

And, taking the high-road I see. It doesn't matter. Your class speaks volumes, and your reason speaks for itself.

LesMisanthrope
your reason speaks for itself.

Unfortunately reason is only useful in an argument when both sides accept it as their method of argument.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope



You are funny - now talking about separating words from the mind just so you can say "words do not hurt"?.
Without the mind who is there to perceive words.
Yes if you succeed in separating your mind ( your person) then words don't hurt. But we are not discussing that.
We are talking about persons with minds that can perceive and understand words.

When we speak a word, why it is impossible to think that "meaning" travels in the sound waves to the one hearing it? Sound gives form doesn't it. When you hear that is exactly how you perceive words!

The thread was on" Do words hurt" the example was a verbally abused person who then sucided . In this there is no assumption that the bullys use unknown words. Words have meanings. Words can hurt. These are words we know not jibberish or foreign language as they are unknown to the mind and without meaning.

A word is a word in my mind that is the place where it appears. Thoughts can happen following the word but the known word is instantly known .

A word can be spoken, written down or thought of .I am thinking of the word word in my mind right now.
The meaning of the word is learned or created and associated with thoughts.
You cannot even perceive words without your mind so its mute to talk about words without the mind . They are a tool .
Separation you want so much and now you are saying words don't exist in your mind which is untrue its just an unwritten and unspoken word.

"Dwh" has a meaning to me and it has sound.
You did not create the meanings for sounds that is arrogant, sounds have had meanings before you were a thought in your fathers eye.
Try as you might you can't separate the mind from words and the meaning from the word in the mind.


Everything exists in thought only.
Without the mind what exists.
You are digressing but its much better than you saying abusive words don't hurt the person.
Words have meanings we are not "giving them power" when we understand what they point to.

FIRST comes the word as without it (the bully speaking the word) there would be no cognition/understanding/pain.
Sound can also hurt other people have tried to explain to you that sound can hurt.


Sorry you can't have separation of word from meaning in the case of the verbal abuse to the suicided person.

No one said all words hurt I have told you verbal abuse and hateful words hurts. All words do not contain hurtful meanings.
The hurtful words are understood they are not void of meaning in the mind of the person ( why would you bother talking ).
The meaning of the word is contained in it .
The word comes first.
To perceive and understand you cannot separate the word from the mind.
The word is in the mind before you write or say it.
Get rid of the mind(person) and only then you can say words don't hurt .

reply to post by BDBinc

You are funny - now talking about separating words from the mind just so you can say "words do not hurt"?.

Yes words don't exist in the mind. Thoughts do. Words are elements of speech and writing. Thoughts are elements of thinking. This is elementary stuff here.

When we speak a word, why it is impossible to think that "meaning" travels in the sound waves to the one hearing it? Sound gives form doesn't it. When you hear that is exactly how you perceive words!

Then how can you not understand foreign words just by hearing them if the meaning travels in the sound? Don't you also hear the meaning that travels with it?

I think you're trying your hardest to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. It's that whole spiritual superiority vibe I'm getting from you. Not only that but the way you structure your posts and punctuation is difficult for me to read—I suppose that is a good way to prove that words hurt. Let's just part ways and ignore each other from here on out. Rational minds will come to their own conclusions regarding this discussion.

reply to post by SisyphusRide


Then you can find me one case of death by words.

LesMisanthrope
reply to post by SisyphusRide

 

Then you can find me one case of death by words.

"Cyber Bullying Suicide"

I'm going to have to say that I agree with the side that says it's not the words here.

It's us. You and I are the unique products of our experiences and as such we are the ones who will ultimately hear and process all the language (words) that comes to us in any form. We will process that language through our own filters of life experiences, contexts and emotions. It will be colored by those things and by our relationships with the speakers, real and imagined. In short, our own psychology as it already exists will help to determine how any words we hear or read affect us.

Because of this, it is entirely possible for perfectly innocent things said by others to wind being completely damaging and hurtful. My own mother has done this to me many, many times, and I've wound up in tears on the car ride home with my husband angry over it all. I know she doesn't realize how easily she does it, too. And, I know that it happens mainly because of my past experiences with her, and not because of any current attempts on her part to do or say anything hurtful.

I did it to a former friend of mine completely unintentionally. We were having a facebook chat and I completely unhinged him by responding to him in the same sardonic mode I used to employ when we had talks back in college. I hadn't realized he had changed in the time since we'd left school, but he had and now my sarcasm which used to be fully understood returned in full measure and great source of amusement to us both was completely enraging. What I did in all innocence was absolutely hurtful now without my intention.

So, I think this has largely gone lost in this discussion in when and how words hurt and why. So far, all I've seen is talk about how people intend to hurt with words, and I want to say that's not always the case. And if words hurt without the speaker meaning them to ... well then, I would say that it's because you the person taking in the language are perceiving the hurt due to your own psychology and inner circumstances. And as I said before, it's because you give those words the power to affect you like that.

There is no doubt that people will and do use words to try to inflict pain, but the as I said, the reverse can also be true - people can hurt you without meaning to and knowing they've done anything. If that's the case, then the pain originates really inside the individual receiving the language.

reply to post by SisyphusRide

"Cyber Bullying Suicide"

I've never heard of people committing suicide by words before. I suppose we can tie a sentence around a tree branch and hang ourselves from it. Or maybe we find the sharpest word there is and use it to hack at our veins.

reply to post by ketsuko

It's us. You and I are the unique products of our experiences and as such we are the ones who will ultimately hear and process all the language (words) that comes to us in any form. We will process that language through our own filters of life experiences, contexts and emotions. It will be colored by those things and by our relationships with the speakers, real and imagined. In short, our own psychology as it already exists will help to determine how any words we hear or read affect us.

This is exactly it ketsuko. I appreciate you considering it philosophically.

In your opinion, is it useful to ban words when we now understand that it is not the words that hurt? Or could there be a more proper course of action? I haven't been able to piece this together quite yet..

reply to post by LesMisanthrope


I don't see that it does any good to ban words.

Here are a couple of examples of why:

I used to play an MMO. Once as I was reading through the forums I came across a post from a very confused person who didn't realize that the word "Spook" use to be a racial slur. The game used language filters, and this person had no turned theirs off. And as usual when people are communicating by typing, everyone in the team had abbreviated this person's character name to "Spook" so that the game kept bleeping it out. It took him a while to figure out why, and he couldn't understand why it was bleeping his name when he did. So, he asked his teammates, and none of them knew, either. Later on, they all went and googled the term "Spook" and learned a new racial slur. Did it do any good to ban the word? Or was it better to let them continue to use it an innocence? Which way would have actually let the harmful connotation die?

A local radio talk show was having "the talk" about the "n" word. A black man called the show and wished that he could give his fellow black men the same lack of concern for slurs that all white people seem to have. His point was that no matter how many slurs black people seem to throw at white people, they never seem to get upset about them, and he thought that was great and wished that black people could just learn to be the same way because then it wouldn't matter who said the "n" or any other slur. So, is it doing anyone any good to continue to keep the extreme negative of the "n" word alive in society? Should the word continue to be so banned that we even went back in time and sanitized Huckleberry Finn so as not to offend people?

Perhaps we would do better to teach our children how they give words power both over others and over themselves and why.

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reply to post by LesMisanthrope

Words exist in the mind (and thoughts do).
When you talk about words you cannot separate them from the mind.
Your argument consists of not this world of words with meanings or the mind, but a world of replacing words with jibberish, crazy ideas desperately inventing ideas to try to make words outside the mind existent.
You seem hell bent on separating words from their meaning context and the mind but this is not how we use them in the" non jibersih world" (where I am saying words hurt).

You can hear spoken words by sound waves that travel to you, the meaning is always in words, the word is in the mind so how is it that you keep removing the mind from the equation.


A reasoning mind will not replace words as we know them compare them to jiberish, or keep saying words exist outside the mind and don't hurt persons in cases of verbal abuse (that by your example, can hurt so much that it becomes intolerable to live).

reply to post by BDBinc


But the words are shaped by your mind and the sum total of you personal psychology.

The words that are so hurtful to you would be completely ineffectual in hurting another.

Or, if you translated those words into a foreign language that you didn't know, would those same words with that same meaning have the same effect although they would effectively be jibberish?

I say that would depend. If the speaker of the now unintelligible words is the same, the force of the nonverbal cues might be enough to trigger your own negative emotions, but if you didn't know precisely what was being said, would the negative emotions be as strong? If the speaker was a stranger and the words were foreign jibberish, what would your reaction be? Sure you would still pick up on the nonverbal cues, but how much would you really care? Would the effect of having a complete stranger say something obviously negative but completely unintelligible be enough to make you actually experience emotional distress or would you feel something much milder?

And when we're done assessing how you behaved in these circumstances. Let's repeat this experiment but use an off-the-cuff remark that hurts you without the speaker intending it to and repeat the process. I'll bet the results would be entirely different. I'll bet you'd only be hurt when you could understand what was said.

In the first case, the amount of psychological distress you are feeling is determined by how you perceive the words and the speaker, but mostly by the words. In the second case, your distress is triggered almost entirely by how you perceive the words because there is no intent on the part of the speaker. Remove the words and you have no basis for distress at all.

Change how a person perceives the words, and you alter the power the words have to provoke feelings in the person.

ketsuko
reply to post by BDBinc

 

But the words are shaped by your mind and the sum total of you personal psychology.

The words that are so hurtful to you would be completely ineffectual in hurting another.

Or, if you translated those words into a foreign language that you didn't know, would those same words with that same meaning have the same effect although they would effectively be jibberish?

I say that would depend. If the speaker of the now unintelligible words is the same, the force of the nonverbal cues might be enough to trigger your own negative emotions, but if you didn't know precisely what was being said, would the negative emotions be as strong? If the speaker was a stranger and the words were foreign jibberish, what would your reaction be? Sure you would still pick up on the nonverbal cues, but how much would you really care? Would the effect of having a complete stranger say something obviously negative but completely unintelligible be enough to make you actually experience emotional distress or would you feel something much milder?

And when we're done assessing how you behaved in these circumstances. Let's repeat this experiment but use an off-the-cuff remark that hurts you without the speaker intending it to and repeat the process. I'll bet the results would be entirely different. I'll bet you'd only be hurt when you could understand what was said.

In the first case, the amount of psychological distress you are feeling is determined by how you perceive the words and the speaker, but mostly by the words. In the second case, your distress is triggered almost entirely by how you perceive the words because there is no intent on the part of the speaker. Remove the words and you have no basis for distress at all.

Change how a person perceives the words, and you alter the power the words have to provoke feelings in the person.

Words are not the sum total of my 'personal psychology'.
Do you really believe that words really are the sum total of YOUR psychology [the sum total of all your behaviour and mind]?!. If you do not have any words is your 'personal psychology' blank.


Verbal abuse that is hurtful to me is not ineffectual in hurting another. I have experienced how hurtful words(speech) to me has hurt others when the very same abuse was directed at them.

If you translated words into jibberish (or a foreign language )in the mind there would be no understanding. Without the mind where are your words??? Your words are not independent of mind.

You cannot verbally communicate effectively with people who do not speak the same words. You cannot separate the mind from the words.

Once again we are not discussing “ does jibberish hurt” it was definitely do words hurt and the context was deliberate, intentional and clear verbal abuse.
Misunderstanding can cause suffering when words are misunderstood in the mind.

Yes you are quite right when you say that in verbal abuse if your remove the words you have no basis for distress at all.

There is no need to change the meaning of words this would inhibit verbal communication of ideas. There is a need to understand verbal abuse hurts people and to refrain from trying to harm other persons with abusive
words.
This includes taking responsibility for your speech. Not thinking (or telling people)
” If I deliberately abuse someone and it hurts them that suffering/mental pain they feel is just a problem with their perception of words.” .
These words we are talking about do not exist outside the mind .
They are not separate from it or in isolation to their meanings, their meanings the same place they are- in the mind.

reply to post by BDBinc

Words exist in the mind (and thoughts do).

Words exist in the mind as thoughts. When you think of a house, do you think you have an actual house in your mind?

When you talk about words you cannot separate them from the mind.

There are hundreds of thousands of words you do not know, and therefor separate from your mind. Read to me some Swahili and tell me what it means. Even when you read it, even when it is connected to your mind, you do not know what they mean.

Your argument consists of not this world of words with meanings or the mind, but a world of replacing words with jibberish, crazy ideas desperately inventing ideas to try to make words outside the mind existent.

Languages you don't understand are not jibberish. That is an example of a desperate invention.

You seem hell bent on separating words from their meaning context and the mind but this is not how we use them in the" non jibersih world" (where I am saying words hurt).

Actually, people speak different languages than you at all times. Do those words hurt you in your non-jibberish world?

You can hear spoken words by sound waves that travel to you, the meaning is always in words, the word is in the mind so how is it that you keep removing the mind from the equation.

All you've argued is that one can hear words. Yes, because words are made of sounds and letters; that's what words are. And sure, the word is in the mind, but in reality we call those thoughts. Call your thoughts words all you wish.

A reasoning mind will not replace words as we know them compare them to jiberish, or keep saying words exist outside the mind and don't hurt persons in cases of verbal abuse (that by your example, can hurt so much that it becomes intolerable to live).

I'm interested to see what else you have "existing" in your "reasoning mind". I need a new computer. If you think of one, do you mind if I have it?

reply to post by ketsuko


Good examples.

Perhaps we would do better to teach our children how they give words power both over others and over themselves and why.

This is what I'm thinking. It must be shown that it is the human who empowers the word, by the very fact that it is him that creates and expresses meaning at his own whim.

reply to post by LesMisanthrope




You have a working computer you do not need a new one.

Words exist in the mind as words. When I perceive a word in my mind I perceive a word.
When my mind tells me I see a house then yes I have an house in my mind. Everything I sense goes through the mind, the mind can be easily tricked. The mind can tell me of the appearance of thoughts of things that are not what they seem as the case of optical illusions.

There are hundreds of thousands of words and my mind does I do not know the meaning of them, the meaning is unknown to my mind. Foreign language is jibberishs to my mind . I do not try to communicate ideas in French words to English word speakers who do not know this language.
Persons(minds) who speak different languages to other persons(minds) that cannot understand those words don’t usally hurt others with their words they tend to confuse them as the foreign language is jibberish not recognized by the mind/person as “words”. Do those jibberish foreign letters hurt you ?No because the mind(person) is not separate from the jibberish (letters)that is appearing in it.
A reasoning mind will not replace words as we know them compare them to jiberish, or keep saying words exist outside the mind and don't hurt persons in cases of verbal abuse (that by your example, can hurt so much that it becomes intolerable to live).
I know you still want to say words are outside the mind therefore words don't have meaning but its just no the case.

The meaning of words is in the mind.
Where do you think words exist outside your mind?
How do you perceive words without your mind?