The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial
of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
Provocative Exploration Of Genetics, Cognition And Academic Warfare
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the worlds leading experts on
language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral,
emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and
insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a
doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our
common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective
analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our
understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm
and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-
slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of
human nature based on science and common sense.
Personal Review: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human
Nature by Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker's wide ranging book "The Blank Slate" is a tour-de-force of
the rising new disciplines in the academy that are slowly overturning the
social constructionist mode of analysis which has dominated intellectual
life for most of the past century.
Pinker takes aim at the phenomenon he describes in his title, which he
breaks into its composite parts: (1) a "blank slate" view of the mind,
whereby the mind has no innate characteristics, and is simply a tabula
rasa onto which ideas and experiences are poured, (2) the "noble savage"
view of humanity based on Rousseau, whereby the primitive or feral is
equated with the "good", and (3) the "ghost in the machine" conception of
consciousness based on Descartes, whereby consciousness is seen as
being separate from physicality, and standing apart from physical mental
processes. Taken together, these three ideologies have led to the
dominance of the "social science model" -- a view which sees human
behavior as not resting at all on a physical, biological or evolutionary basis,
but rather being the product of "socially constructed realities".
Pinker attacks the blank slate on the basis of several relatively new
academic disciplines: cognitive science, neuroscience, evolutionary
psychology, just to name a few. He documents how the radical politics of
academia resisted tooth and nail the findings of these newer disciplines,
and their attempt to synthesize what we know about human culture with
what we know about human biology. The resistance was, and is, almost
entirely political in nature, and is based on a fear of the truth. The fear is
that if human behavior is not entirely socially conditioned, but is to some
degree innate, this will be used to justify social evils such as racism,
sexism, violence, inequality and so on. Pinker spends chapter after
chapter examining several of these fears, and deflating them.
Pinker's overarching thesis is that human behavior is definitely conditioned
by evolution and genetics, but that this evolution has taken place in the
context of human culture. This is not a biological determinst perspective,
but instead one which takes into account the biological factors as well as
the social ones. Pinker points out that to the extent we tie our political and
social values to false ideas about human beings, we actually make
adherence to these values more tenuous -- because future scientific
findings could undermine them, if we see the values based on science
itself (or, rather, a misconceived understanding of science). So Pinker's
advice is to separate our values -- political and social -- from science, and
thereby strengthen the independent validity of these values, as well as
allow science to proceed and not be stifled by politically-based fears.
To take one example, Pinker points out that to accept that men and
women have biologically-based differences is not to believe that, because
of these differences, men and women are consigned to only certain social
roles, or are supposed to be "unequal". The value of gender equality is a
political and social value, and it should not depend on actual biological
identity between men and women, or an idea that gender differences are

social constructs that are not at all based on biology. Instead, our values
regarding gender equality should be de-coupled from biology. This allows
us to affirm gender equality in its own right as a human social and political
value, regardless of what biology teaches us about biological differences
between the sexes, while at the same time preventing political fears
relating to gender equality from stifling the progress that science is making
in further understanding human behavior as it relates to bio-evolutionary
differences between female and male humans.
The book is a fantastic read. Pinker is entertaining and witty in making his
points. Readers will be rewarded with a sneak peek at what the future
holds in terms our academic and intellectual life, and the emerging new
consensus about the nature of human beings.
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