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The Blank Slate

The Modern Denial of Human Nature

By Steven Pinker

(27)

| Hardcover | 9780670031511

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Book Description

Our conceptions of human nature affect everything aspect of our lives, from child-rearing to politics to morality to the arts. Yet many fear that scientific discoveries about innate patterns of thinking and feeling may be used to justify inequality, to subvert social change, and to dissolve personalContinue

Our conceptions of human nature affect everything aspect of our lives, from child-rearing to politics to morality to the arts. Yet many fear that scientific discoveries about innate patterns of thinking and feeling may be used to justify inequality, to subvert social change, and to dissolve personal responsibility.

In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature and instead have embraced three dogmas: The Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), The Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and The Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology). Each dogma carries a moral burden, so their defenders have engaged in desperate tactics to discredit the scientists who are now challenging them.

Pinker provides calm in the stormy debate by disentangling the political and moral issues from the scientific ones. He shows that equality, compassion, responsibility, and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about an innately organized psyche. Pinker shows that the new sciences of mind, brain, genes, and evolution, far from being dangerous, are complementing observations about the human condition made by millennia of artists and philosophers. All this is done in the style that earned his previous books many prizes and worldwide acclaim: irreverent wit, lucid exposition, and startling insight on matters great and small.

Critics

  • Hoist by his own polemic

    The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker Allen Lane £25, pp509 Here is an intriguing question. Who wrote the following words? 'A child's mind is a blank book. During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • It's all in the mind

    The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker 434pp, Allen Lane, £25 This is really two books in one, which may be why it is rather long. "Pinker One" lays out convincingly the reasons why we cannot possibly do without a concept ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

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  • The authos argue that we are not born naive like a blank slate, where the parent, teacher, society can write on it whatever they want. Not true at all.

    We are all born with language instinct, we are all born with some pre-set wiring.

    The author urge the scientist society and the genera ... (continue)

    The authos argue that we are not born naive like a blank slate, where the parent, teacher, society can write on it whatever they want. Not true at all.

    We are all born with language instinct, we are all born with some pre-set wiring.

    The author urge the scientist society and the general society not to worry too much on the taboo, or the political correctness on arguing that we are all born pre-wired. Too many people are worried that if we are not born as blank slate, that hints that we are not equal and this will be a evidence to justify racism, etc.

    Well, this does not make sense for scientific progress, right. If this is true, there is not point in denying it. We should be objective in it, and work on undiscovering what is already written there when we were born.

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    Samsara said on Nov 7, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • He shows his political cards here. His thesis is surely right, and there really is a lot of silly hostility to Darwinism in the way that he describes. Dennett touches on this too.

    Is this helpful?

    Leebeck said on Feb 29, 2008 | Add your feedback

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