Steven Pinker | science
By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu.
Steven Pinker | science Read More »
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker | poetry
Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.
Steven Pinker | poetry Read More »
Steven Pinker | learning
There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization.
Steven Pinker | learning Read More »
Steven Pinker | equality
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.
Steven Pinker | equality Read More »
Quote from Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people’s interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise.
Quote from Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Read More »
Quote from Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can’t leak your hidden intentions if you don’t think they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others. But the truth is useful, so it should be registered somewhere in the mind, walled off from the parts that interact with other people.
Quote from Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works Read More »