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Title: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0-670-03151-8 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 26 September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (139 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Everyone, not just science junkies, should read this!
Comment: Wow! About two years ago, I read Pinker's 'The Language Instinct.' Barely a year had passed before I read his 'How the Mind Works' and 'Words and Rules.' Each, of course, was amazing, erudite, well-researched and completely entertaining. I didn't think it possible but Pinker has gracefully outdone himself. Not only entertaining, this book is one that HAD to be written and I'm sure glad Steven Pinker thought the same!
The title, 'The Blank Slate' is one of three commonplace theories that Pinker sees as contributing to the misdirection of politics, society and science in general. In brief, the belief that we are all interchangeable tabula rasas (the blank slate), that we are born with only good instincts only to be corrupted by society (the noble savage) and the existence of 'higher' spirit or soul in each human body (the ghost in the machine.) It's not hard to see why the blank slate is a bogus theory. Humans, as products, of biology have innate urges and are in a sense, genetically INCLINED towrds certain behavior. Why is the blank slate dangerous? Belief that crime can be 'unlearned' through rehabilitation, that 'reality' is simply a synonym for 'conditioned belief' that can be reframed at will, and that there is no thing as measured intellegence- all of these beliefs lead to socially disasterous consequences.
It should be said that the authors goal is not shock us, stir up unnecessary contraversy or get off on offending his readers. This is not an anti-PC book; in fact, Pinker is admirably calm and well-reasoned. He discusses sciences relations to social policy, but doesn't preach about or disclose his political leanings. He talks about feminism but where he comes out against 'gender feminism,' he has nothing but praise for feminisms goals of parity and equality. To be sure, he lets us know that evolutionary science has tended to point towards the right by showing us that marxist and postmodernist interprestations of 'social reality' to be untrue. On the other hand, though, Pinker shows us that sciences insistence that while biology doesn't explain everything, it factors in to more than we think, alienates the right-wingers and backs certain left-leaning theories. In this way, science, and hence Pinker's book, is apolitical.
In close, I have to affirm an observation below. At first glance, a commentary on the problem in the arts and humanities by scientist, Pinker seems not only a far stretch, but snooty. After reading the book in full though, I can easily say that it is not only the best chapter of the book, it ranks amongst the best discourses on the 'humanities slump' that I've ever read, easily beating out most by humanities professors. This book deserves every piece of it's 5 stars and then some!!!
Rating: 5
Summary: Steven Pinker's 'The Blank Slate' Précis
Comment: Steven Pinker's book, "The Blank Slate," refutes a dominant social scientific paradigm of the Twentieth Century, the Standard Social Science Model. He particularly criticizes three prevalent themes, which have shaped this model: the Blank Slate idea, the idea of the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine idea as problematic or wrong. The idea of the Blank Slate, attributable to Locke, holds "that the mind has no innate traits" (... book description); the mind is therefore shaped exclusively by experience. The Noble Savage idea, deriving from Dryden and Rousseau, holds "that people are born good and corrupted by society" (Amazon.com book description). The idea of the Ghost in the Machine - "each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology" (...book description) - and usually attributable to Descartes, argues against the concept that humans are "just other hunks of matter in the biological world" (3) and that we can change that which we don't like about ourselves. Pinker's "The Blank Slate" marks the ascendancy of a biological view over a social one, and its significance lies in its brain-centered analysis of human behavior.
Pinker argues that cognitive science, neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and evolutionary psychology bridge the divide between biology and culture, thus radically rewriting those aspects of the concepts of the Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine. Cognitive science continues to show in ever-increasing complexity how the mind "can be grounded in the physical world by the concepts of information, computation, and feedback," (31) how "the mind cannot be a blank slate, because blank slates don't do anything," (34) how "an infinite range of behavior can be generated by finite combinatorial programs," (36) how "universal mental mechanisms can underlie superficial variation across cultures," (37) and how "the mind is a complex system composed of many interacting parts." (39) By drawing on brain research, cognitive science therefore significantly redresses the Blank Slate idea.
Neuroscience, the study of how cognition and emotion are implemented in the brain shows how our emotional lives, in conjunction with the way we think, are all seated in the brain's activity, an amazing thought for many people (41). Phineas Gage, who lost part of his brain in a railway accident, lived with perception, memory, language, and motor functions intact, but with a completely changed-for-the-worse personality (42). Scientists such as Gazzaniga and Sperry have shown that when the corpus callosum is cut, the brain's two cerebral hemispheres "can exercise free will without the other one's advice or consent" (43). Thus cognitive neuroscience is washing away not just the idea of the Noble Savage but also the concept of the Ghost in the Machine.
Studies of identical twins separated at birth, reared apart and reunited years later show remarkably broad-based similarities, thus calling into question the Blank Slate hypothesis as well (47).
Evolutionary Psychology researches the adaptive design or purpose of the mind as it was engineered in ancestral environments. It examines the way natural selection simulated engineering processes to examine the ways in which how well something works played a causal role in the way it originated (52). Evolutionary Psychology thus explains the reasons why the 'tabula rasa' isn't blank.
The significance of Pinker's book lies in his positing that the Blank Slate is an empirical hypothesis about the way the brain functions, which has to be evaluated on the grounds of whether or not it is true (421). Cognitive science, neuroscience, behavioral genetics and evolution are more and more showing that the Blank Slate idea is not true (421). The brain's incredible complexity, its amazing ability to mentally represent real and hypothetical worlds, and its powerful combinatorial computational ability all show that the brain has numerous innate traits (424) and that not all choices it makes are free from Darwinian evolutionary processes.
Rating: 4
Summary: Undeniably Intelligent and Thought-Provoking
Comment: I am glad that I picked up this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in the nature v. nurture debate. Pinker is undeniably brilliant, and his explorations of the debate are thought-provoking and stimulating. Pinker sets out to debunk three popular notions: the Blank Slate (that people are born blank and their identities are forged by their environment), the Noble Savage (people are born inherently good and are corrupted by society), and the Ghost in the Machine (that some metaphysical soul directs individuals). Pinker capably challenges all three, but levels most of his attacks against the first two traditionally liberal doctrines rather than the latter conservative one.
Which brings me to a problem with this book: Pinker mentions actual studies involving brain damage and twin similarities, but his arguments extend well beyond those supported purely in empirical evidence. Pinker delves into politics, gender, and the humanities, all the while claiming that his somewhat conservative-skewed slant is supported by hard science.
Pinker's claim that all of his views on these matters are supported by science is dubious. For example, at one point he attacks liberal scholars who suggest that modern man has difficulty seeing through the bombardment of media images he is exposed to. Instead, Pinker claims such fears are misplaced because man is endowed with an innate common sense. However, man's mental capacities evolved in a far different environment than today's media, and it's difficult to see how Pinker refutes the ideas of the liberal scholars.
Pinker repeatedly levels vitriolic attacks against these "liberal" scholars, especially those in sociology who emphasize the importance of culture. As an inatist psychologist would, he argues that men are individuals first and members of society second, and that society and culture are formed by individual men. True in the abstract, but difficult to reconcile with the fact that we are born into a world with a preexisting culture and society. One who attempts to exercise control over the culture they are born into will find their influence extremely limited.
This book is an insightful exploration of modern biological and philosophical issues on what it means to be human. But by no means should it be accepted as the final word on the subject.
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Title: How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0393318486 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Language Instinct : How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0060958332 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0060958405 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett ISBN: 0670031860 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 10 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Nature Via Nurture : Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley ISBN: 0060006781 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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