Steven Pinker: Chalking it up to the blank slate

http://www.ted.com Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate argues that all humans are born with some innate traits. Here, Pinker talks about his thesis, and why some people found it incredibly upsetting.

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[Agnotio]

@daimonmagus I don't get this comment, or why people thumbed it up. What judgmental unscientific conclusions did Pinker come to? He argued that the decline of the arts is due to their lack of appeal to human nature, and that parenting is not as important a factor in children's behavior once genes are taken into account. Both of these are based on psychological research. The video you linked is by Stefan Molyneux, who is not a qualified psychologist, and a questionable character at that.

[fringeelements]

Stephen Jay Gould, that guy is a polymath of fail.

[michalchik]

I don't agree with the conclusions on parenting because he is using a set of data that does not distinguish between variability in the environment and the adoption of different niche's or specialization within the family.Sibling compete and differentiate. We need studies that compare parenting styles with outcomes in genetically identical siblings in different households. One then can we identify the degree to which nature and nurture and uncontrollable factors contribute.

[metaldude82]

I am more than halfway through "The Blank Slate" and it is interesting. I do have a gripe with this statement on page 128: "anyone who believes in an immaterial soul is certainly not going to believe that thought and feeling consist of information processing in the tissues of the brain." This seems to sugguest that you have to either believe in neuroscience or an immaterial soul. However, the two are NOT mutually exclusive unless a person is an extreme Cartesianist, Anyone agree?

[dROUFrank]

Logically, he's begging the question. By positing a human nature as it relates to art and criticism, and using that position to reject art and criticism as contrary to his position, he's not giving us any insight into what this rejection might actuall entail; instead, he's simply rejecting without analysing, and justifying his rejection through his lack of analysis. If human nature is at odds with modern art and criticism, it's not enough to say so; he should be prepared to say how.

[dROUFrank]

It is not necessarily the case that Pinker is wrong, as such, about art and criticism, as that he hasn't even bothered to format the question to the answer he's posited in the relevant language. He's made little attempt to understand "elite" art or criticism, literary analysis or theory, or to appreciate the literary and visual forms he's talking about. Instead he simply rejects them because they reject "human nature" as he understands it.

[dROUFrank]

The problem with what Steven Pinker has said about the arts and criticism, is that he's attributing "decline" to a disregard for human nature. That may seem like a reasonable hypothesis to him, but what he's doing is effacing the functions of the fields he's critiquing. Without raising the question of what human nature is, as it relates to culture and art, there exists no criticism, no analysis, and art and theory recapitulate undigested assumptions latent in the concept of human nature.

[raderator]

Oops, the Nazis were right, yet again. How embarrassing.

[crudhousefull]

His mind is so structured, I can almost hear the clicks when he's talking. Each argument has logical steps going back to his view of the world. Very impressive

[crudhousefull]

This guy is awesome. Very very smart

[ManyInfiniteComments]

@MaxWeberz, Epigenetics has the same conclusion as Pinker... not only genetics plays an important part of who you are but the development of cells will vary even among twins... which is what Pinker mentioned in this very precise video. Second, he never said we are all biologically-driven savages, he said heredity plays a huge role in our personality, but other things such as culture and peers also have minor effects

...., in essence there is no perfect copy of anything.

[FIGHTFANNERD3]

@xNickTheBrickx indeed