Related Ideas

Review these ideas and then use the BACK key in your browser to return to the page you were on.

The debate over hate speech and pornography raises important sociological questions about causation in society. Everyone agrees that there are many factors involved in creating or maintaining any social situation. This is true, for example, of the inequalities that exist between men and women or between blacks and whites. Where do hate speech and pornography fit in?

• What does it mean for a causal factor to be "fundamental" in creating or maintaining a situation? How can we determine which factor or factors are fundamental?
  

• How can we determine whether a particular factor is "necessary" in the development or maintenance of a situation?
  

• How can we determine whether a particular factor or set of factors is a "sufficient condition" for the emergence or maintenance of a situation?

In the debate over hate speech and pornography, advocates of restriction often claim, or hint, that these factors are crucial in creating or maintaining certain inequalities between whites and blacks or between men and women. (Restrictions would be far less important if they would not significantly lessen those inequalities.) These are sociological claims. How can we decide whether they are true?

For example, how can we decide whether hate speech was more important than not having the right to vote for maintaining poverty among blacks in the rural south in 1940? What do we need to know in order to answer this question? What methods are useful? Without answers to these questions it is difficult to appraise some of the claims made in the debate over speech restrictions.