Speech, Harm, and the Mind-Body Problem in First Amendment Jurisprudence

“Sucks and stones will break my bones,” Justice Scalia pronounced from the bench in oral arguments in Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network, “but words can never hurt me. That's the First Amendment,” he added. Jay Alan Sekulow, the lawyer for the petitioners, anti-abortion protesters who had been enjoined from moving closer than fifteen feet away from those entering an abortion facility, was obviously pleased by this characterization of the right to free speech, replying, “That's certainly our position on it, and that is exactly correct …”

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SPEECH AND OTHER ACTS

Legal Theory ◽

10.1017/s1352325204040248 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 10 (4) ◽

pp. 261-272

Author(s):

Susan J. Brison

Keyword(s):

First Amendment ◽

Free Speech ◽

Body Problem ◽

Hate Speech ◽

Henry Louis Gates ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Mind

In an article published in 2001, Charles W. Collier raises a number of objections to my article “Speech, Harm, and the Mind-Body Problem in First Amendment Jurisprudence,” beginning with an implicit objection embedded in the subtitle of his article: “Hate Speech and the Mind-Body Problem: A Critique of Postmodern Censorship Theory.” Since I advocate neither postmodernism nor censorship, and since I would have thought that “postmodern censorship” was an oxymoron, I found this characterization of my position surprising, to say the least. Collier does not define “postmodern censorship theory” or even “postmodernism,” but he helpfully includes a note citing Steven Gey's article, “The Case against Postmodern Censorship Theory.” Gey, in turn, claims to have picked up the terminology from an article by Kathleen Sullivan, “Free Speech Wars.” Curiously, though, Sullivan nowhere uses the phrase “postmodern censorship theory” in the article cited, although she does discuss a group of leftist legal theorists she dubs “the new speech regulators,” arguing that they: demand a response from those who would leave speech mostly deregulated; and they deserve a response that goes beyond the rote and reflexive invocation of free speech as an article of faith. The appeal to the First Amendment as self-evident truth may be no more effective, as Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. recently cautioned, than Samuel Johnson's attempt to refute Bishop Berkeley merely by kicking a stone.

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The Mind-Body Problem Revisited

Contemporary Psychology ◽

10.1037/0013579 ◽

1975 ◽

Vol 20 (8) ◽

pp. 660-660

Author(s):

MADGE SCHEIBEL ◽

ARNOLD SCHEIBEL

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Mind

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Zombies and Dolls

10.1093/oso/9780198728443.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Marcello Massimini ◽

Giulio Tononi

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

Thought Experiments ◽

Turing Test ◽

Hard Problem ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Hard Problem ◽

The Mind ◽

The Brain

This chapter uses thought experiments and practical examples to introduce, in a very accessible way, the hard problem of consciousness. Soon, machines may behave like us to pass the Turing test and scientists may succeed in copying and simulating the inner workings of the brain. Will all this take us any closer to solving the mysteries of consciousness? The reader is taken to meet different kind of zombies, the philosophical, the digital, and the inner ones, to understand why many, scientists and philosophers alike, doubt that the mind–body problem will ever be solved.

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Brute Necessity and the Mind–Body Problem

10.1093/oso/9780198758600.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

James Van Cleve

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

Necessary Truths ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Mind

In a growing number of papers one encounters arguments to the effect that certain philosophical views are objectionable because they would imply that there are necessary truths for whose necessity there is no explanation. For short, they imply that there are brute necessities. Therefore, the arguments conclude, the views in question should be rejected in favor of rival views under which the necessities would be explained. This style of argument raises a number of questions. Do necessary truths really require explanation? Are they not paradigms of truths that either need no explanation or automatically have one, being in some sense self-explanatory? If necessary truths do admit of explanation or even require it, what types of explanation are available? Are there any necessary truths that are truly brute? This chapter surveys various answers to these questions, noting their bearing on arguments from brute necessity and arguments concerning the mind–body problem.

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