Rating: 
Summary: Human Nature According to Pinker
Review: This book describes a conflict in academia about the character of human nature. As neuroscience limns out an inborn human nature with variations between individuals, some thinkers have protested that, in the service of political equality, we must believe that all people are born with innocent, equal potential, that all babies are a "blank slate."
We would have been well-served if Pinker had written a 150-page tour-de-force debunking the blank slate theory, but Pinker wrote a 434-page diatribe filled with premature declarations. While he writes delightfully when pointing out the absurdities to which "the modern denial of human nature" has led us, he is way out of line, and often simply ignorant, in his treatments of profound ideas from other fields. From ultra-simplistic, shallow dismissals of what religion and modern philosophy have to say about human nature to his spotty summary of 'what science knows about human nature', he fails in his encyclopedic sweep for lack of homework.
To give one striking example of the limitations of his vision, 'maternal instinct' does not appear in the index, no, not even under "parenting," nor in any significant way on the radar, of his book. Although a very prolonged and intense investment in offspring defines humanity apart from most other species, nine months of gestation, enormous biochemical changes, four years of nursing, and many more of constant care, per child, are apparently not central to the emotional hardware of humanity, or even to altruism, which, Pinker describes as a cognitive, learned process.
The supple writing, even occasional beauty, of Pinker's style, as well as sympathy for his basic argument, might hold you for a while, but the overstatements and generalizations should provoke you to, regretfully, toss this tome.
Rating: 
Summary: Unblinkingly Honest Account of Humanity and Its Discontents
Review: Armed with the truth that evolutionary psychology is correct, and that competing ideas about human nature (tabla rasa, noble savage, immortal soul) are wrong, this engaging book efficiently dispatches many of the intellectual demons, monsters, and lesser bogeymen of our time, ranging from dogmatic academics, to creationist ministers, to Pol Pot. Steven Pinker comfortably takes his place alongside the full slate of recent outstanding scientific authors such as Steven Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, E. O. Wilson, Brian Greene, and Alan Guth. Perhaps Richard Dawkins said it most succinctly: evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Nevertheless, most societies are still dominated and oftentimes impeded or supressed by people who cling to discredited notions about human beings and the world they inhabit. Evolutionary psychology displaces the "God-of-the-gaps" from one of His last refuges: the human mind. In spite of a specific papal injunction against such knowledge (in the very document where John Paul II famously accepts evolution as a fact of nature), Catholic or other religious groups do not seem eager to support research aimed at proving that an immortal soul, genie, or some other magic controls our minds. [See ... "Theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man."] With consciousness explained as a purely materialistic process, God could only live in two places, which may be expressed as the yet unanswered questions: Where does physics come from? How did life begin? But, we're working on answering these questions too. Books like Pinker's remind us why this is such an exciting time to be alive.
Rating: 
Summary: Not What I Expected
Review: As I read the first part of The Blank Slate, I thought to myself repeatedly, "This is OK, but it's pretty fluffy." When the first part ended, I found myself begging for the earlier "fluff." I eventually realized that Pinker didn't intend for his book to be informative or ground breaking; it was just supposed to be enlightening and challenging for individuals who aren't aware of what science has been discovering for the past half century.This is not to say that Pinker's book is pointless. There's obviously a disconnect between science and public opinion in the area of human nature, which Pinker points out was caused by intellectuals and idealists early in the 20th century and perpetuated by the media. So Pinker's book is very good at bridging that gap between what the scientists know and what most ordinary people know - the issues Pinker discusses are issues which should be available to everyone, so on the one hand I want to recommend this book. But on the other hand, The Blank Slate just strikes me as watered down. I notice that another reviewer said Pinker "takes no prisoners," but his book is actually rather weak in its positions. Pinker spends a lot of time whacking confused Marxists and religious extremists but not very much time developing the hereditarian position, except to say "Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as human nature." Pinker's book is in many ways ideololgically unadventurous and informationally aenemic. For instance, while he does give us a chapter on gender differences, he spends most of his time talking about feminism, rape, and gender roles, without exploring topics like the fact that women see color better than men. And as far as ideology goes, Pinker predictably bashes popular scapegoats like Communism and Nazism, while at the same time attacking eugenics without even discussing why he thinks it's so awful. If you understand what Pinker is saying - that human traits are, to a certain extent, transmissable through heredity - you'll have to wonder why he summarily dismisses eugenics as bad. I think everyone can agree that involuntary sterelization is unethical, but does Pinker actually believe it would be a terrible sin for all the healthy, intelligent people to try to have more children for the purpose of improving humankind? He doesn't seem to have given any thought to the subject. Also, Pinker doesn't talk about the fact that evolution is an ongoing process - humanity is still evolving. Tall men have higher fertility rates than short men, and height is as much as 90% genetic. Are we going to get taller? Criminals have more children than non criminals, and criminality also has a hereditary component. Are we going to see an increase in criminality? The answer, in these two cases, is "probably yes," but Pinker gives me the impression that he's not aware of (or not interested in) where we are headed genetically. So I recommend this book for anyone new to the subject of human nature; The Blank Slate introduces concepts everybody should know about. But I myself lost interest in the book before getting all the way through, and think that readers who are already well versed on the issue of human nature will probably also find The Blank Slate disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: No blank slate this...
Review: From the preface, "This book is about the moral, emotional, and political colorings of the concept of human nature in modern life." Alright, what is human nature, where does it come from and how is it employed? Mr. Pinker tackles these questions with skill and grace in an evocative way. I highly recommend this book to everyone interested in human cognition and its effects.
While I found myself arguing with some of Mr. Pinker's assumptions and conclusions, never did I think he was way out in left field. Instead he helped me to clarify my own assumptions and conclusions. This is the mark of a well presented argument by my way of thinking. Mr. Pinker enlarges the arena of discourse rather than narrows it.
Lastly, this book is more tightly defined than his book, "How the Mind Works." Both are thought provoking but if you can only read one, read this one.
Rating:
Summary: A good try but too caught up by some fashions of the moment
Review: I came to "The Blank Slate" having been most impressed by Pinker's "The Language Instinct" and while the newer book added some useful insights it also disappointed in a couple of areas.
Pinker seems to have convinced himself he is being balanced by attacking both the "blank slate" assumption he ascribes to the Left and the "nobel savage" assumption he ascribes to the Right, though when he goes as far as to suggest that the Nazis were no worse than the Marxists, you have to be concerned as to how much he has been caught up by the hysterics of the resurgent Right. He manages to stretch his net to encompass every imaginable atrocity that could possibly be attributed to authoritarian regimes flying Marxist flags while failing to mention the many other atrocious authoritarian regimes which would deny any assoiation with Marxism, save the Nazis.
But essentially Pinker is trying to mount an updated defence of E.O. Wilson's oft mistakenly criticised notion of "human nature", and that is certainly a worthy goal as the denial of human nature is a road to delusion.
Yet even there Pinker seems to have been seduced by the anti-intellectual fashions of the moment, going to some length to try to legitimise the idea that assured retribution is the natural human way to keep a lot more than psychopaths in check.
Personally, I don't see that we have reason to confine our thinking to a polarised spectrum between the excessive relativism of the Left, which brings us political correctness and equal outcomes, and the naive realism of the Right which proclaims absolute values of right and wrong, good and evil. Rather I see relativism as the first imperfect step beyond realism from where we need to take not Pinker's three-quarters of a step backwards but rather another full step in a completely different direction to a more systemic understanding of the way the world works, both naturally and socially. I expect Pinker might protest that such understanding does not come naturally to many humans and could easily find plenty of supporting data, but from there a case can at least be made that trusting a broad and transparent elite, such as the open source software movement, is more likely to help us share this planet in relative comfort than the naive trust that in-groups will continue to expand so as to take in not just six billion plus humans but also all those other critters essential to a healthy global environment. I don't expect Pinker really wants the world to continue in a perpetual state of government by intimidation, but that is what The Blank Slate seems to be trying to legitimise.
Those reservations aside, Pinker certainly lines up a lot of clear evidence, and a few interesting rhetorical devices, against the blank slate and the nobel savage.
He also hypothesises an interesting candidate to account for the 50% of variation between individuals across a range of psychological tests that cannot be attributed to genetic inheritance. His claim that parenting sans genetics has so small an influence as to defy measurement is not winning him many friends, although the data certainly seems to support it. However his hypothesis that the bulk of the remaining variation can be traced to peer relations needs to be scrutinised very carefully.
Even as an avowed atheist and double-sided skeptic, I am bemused that Pinker totally ignores any possibility that the development of embryonic brains might be influenced by electro-magnetic patterns in the world due to the passage of other lives. Even without conjuring up a spiritual dimension, any honest student of natural history must admit that there is still a lot more we don't know about the workings of the world at such levels. If it was not so far beyond the scope of this review, I'd be tempted to spell out the symbiogenesis case for there being more going on in the development of mind than can be accounted by inheritance and overt social interaction, be the later peer or parenting.
I also took the chance during the southern summer to try to observe the evolution of peer relations, both amongst younger humans and, through fortuitous opportunity, some avian species. In retrospect, the biggest problem I have with the peer hypothesis is that much of the psychological variation seems to manifest itself well before much is worked out between peers. Certainly there can be an edge to peer interactions which is as shaping as any parental relationship, but so also there is an edge to early explorations of the natural and built environments. The jury should probably stay out a while on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Mind Altering
Review: I have been an avid reader of books on neuro-cognitive sciences and the new field of evolutionary psychology.
And this book of Steven Pinker's is astounding in its depth and breadth of knowledge and the clarity of his arguments in defending these new fields of research which I think will be the next BIG LEAP in our civilization ..
A lot of it is going to rub many orthodox, conservative minded people the wrong way for precisely the reasons that he outlines in the book ... But for open minded intelligent detractors it poses a challenge to come up with an equally strong rebuttal if they have one that does not descend into empty rhetoric OR below the belt attacks ... that degrades any informed debate when there are strong egos being hurt.
Pinker comes across as extrememly fairminded, pitting himself quite ruthlessly against all those difficult questions that detractors have come up with till date .. often becoming even the sympathetic "psychiatrist" as he gently hand holds us thru our fears of the alternatives to the Blank Slate/Noble Savage/Ghost in The Machine theories.
It has been such a long and pleasurable read ... I would say it opened windows in my mind that were being rattled anyways by the winds of the twenty first century science and research.
Our current age needs writing like this to become more part of mainstream reading.
Thank You Pinker for the gift of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Highly politicized, non-scientific book
Review: I have been an avid reader of Steven Pinker's books but found this one non-scientific, political garbage. Instead of concentrating on the science, he seems to dedicate his efforts to bashing scientists who don't share his (and his friends) opinions. Highly dissappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Good but too long and too precise
Review: I loved the common sense approach, but it did not capture my immagination.
Maybe this is a sign of really good science, but not what I want in a book I read for fun.
I think perhaps he was too clear in his supporting arguments. They are so perfectly stated, and so obviously right, that there were no discoveries for me to make on my own.
Rating: 
Summary: The Emperor Wears No Clothes
Review: Many years ago now, a book was published called From Time Immemorial. It was about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has nothing to do with science or philosophy. The author was Joan Peters.
In this book, she argued that there really were no Arabs in Palestine at the time of Zionist settlement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Herzl and company weren't being misleading when they dubbed the country "a land without a people for a people without a land." Or so Peters argued. Rather, illegal Arab immigrants were smuggled in to prevent the birth of Israel.
The book received almost universal acclaim. It was praised as revolutionary in outlets both lay and scholarly throughout the country.
Shortly thereafter, two scholars -- Norman Finkelstein and Walid Khalidi -- began to scrutinize Peters's work. What they discovered would come as a great embarassment to the more intellectually honest among the academic community: From Time Immemorial was a fraud. From cover to cover, it was sheer fabrication.
There are some parallels between the publication of The Blank Slate and From Time Immemorial. Pinker got mostly positive reviews in the U.S. The depth of his research was praised. At most, some reviewers took issue with the nastiness of Pinker's tone and his strawman attacks.
And while Pinker doesn't fabricate or deliberatly misquote, he does misrepresent as fact ideas that are actually quite controversial. When he even bothers to address opposing views at all, he argues against them with dubious evidence (the Minnesota and Scandinavian twin studies -- see Kamin's recent critique), irrelevancies (a small chart of arbitrarily-selected, ostensibly warlike tribal societies), or things that don't exist (like Chagnon's alleged correlation between killing and number of progeny, which he himself implicitly renounced a decade and half ago).
In some areas -- particularly those dealing with cognition and neuroscience -- I have no choice but to believe that Pinker is consciously misrepresenting the current state of knowledge. In others -- anthropology, sociology, history, biology and philosophy -- I'll be charitable and assume that he really has made no effort whatsoever to familarize himself with positions held by those outside of the EP amen corner.
Of course, Pinker's assertions are not generally subjected to the same scrutiny in the press as those of, say, Richard Lewontin. Why? For the same reason the validity of the ideas of Herbert Spencer of the eugenicists or Robert Ardrey weren't subject to much scrutiny. These ideas -- and Pinker's -- simultaneously reflect and reinforce the status quo.
Yes, Lewontin, Rose and the rest are on the Left. So what? They've never made any effort to hide their sympathies, which is more than can be said for some of their opponents. Their arguments should be judged on their scientific and logical merits. And by that standard, they hold up quite well.
Pinker and company can insist on their political liberalism all they like. They are, in the first place, liars -- "New Republic liberal" is a cute way of saying neoconservative, as anyone at all familiar with the current political terrain knows. Pinker thanks Thomas Sowell, several Pioneer Fund recipients, and several American Enterprise Institute Fellows in his acknowledgements. Pinker has also lectured at the AEI. His book also has the distinction of being the only popular science work I've ever seen cite as credible sources the National Review and Reason.
Some other prominent biodeterminists have done things that make their political motivations a bit suspect, but I won't waste space on these, since it confuses the issue anyway. The issue is not *political* bias per se; it is *ideological* bias. The distinction is important. Ideological bias in the form of reductionism and determinism, and also in the form of presuppositions that reflect the biodeterminists' positions as largely well-off white men. Politics is a separate sphere. Many very liberal people supported eugenics.
It is no coincidence that enthusiasm for evolutionary psychology is most heavily concentrated in the most fervently capitalist, militaristic Western nation.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but not particularly well researched
Review: Pinker constructs an elaborate and well-thought out argument, and his overall thesis is one whose outlines I largely agree with--that as biological creatures, humans are influenced by biology in many ways, often so subtly that we are unaware of it. Humans are animals, after all, and subject to the same instinctual drives and influences as other animals are; it's only human arrogance that would ever lead us to think otherwise. His assertion that humans are inherently *both* peaceable, kind, and generous *and* violent, savage and cruel, is one that I also agree with; see my point above about humans being animals.
However, I have doubts about the validity of some of the information Pinker presents here. One reviewer called Pinker a "polymath;" another and less favorable way to state that might be to say "jack of all trades, master of none." Pinker presents scores upon scores of statistics, facts, factoids and examples to buttress his claims, and at first glance it does all appear to be very impressive. However, on closer inspection, I found that claims pertaining to fields of which I had knowledge were all somewhat dubious. For example, his contrast on page 45 of common chimps and bonobos, in which he characterizes common chimps as "among the most aggressive mammals known to zoology" and bonobos as "among the most peaceful," "in common chimps, males dominate the females while among bonobos the females have the upper hand, common chimps have sex for procreation, bonobos for recreation" is a gross oversimplification of the differences between these two species, to the point of caricature if not outright distortion. His attribution of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs to the superior technology of the Spaniards is a popular Western fantasy that has been strongly challenged in recent years. In particular one very persuasive alternate explanation that has been put forth argues that the defeat of the Aztecs was largely a Native American phenomenon: the Aztecs had succeeded in angering a very large proportion of the surrounding civilizations, so that when Cortes showed up, he served as a rallying point for large numbers of these disaffected peoples. These nations were willing to contribute large numbers of troops to fight alongside him, and it was largely thanks to these indigenous troops that Cortes was able to succeed. Certainly it can be argued that this is a more persuasive hypothesis than that a small band of Europeans, in unfamiliar territory with limited supplies and ammuntion, were able to all on their own throw down one of the largest empires of the New World, no matter *what* technological advantages they may have possessed. Pinker also does not often cite the primary literature; a large number of his factoids are drawn from books. This is a problem, as often the peer review process for books is not as stringent as that applied to articles published in journals.
In addition, I found Pinker's analysis of sexual assault to be severely flawed. While I agree with Pinker that the concept that "rape is not about sex, it is about power" has in some circles ascended to the status of dogma and is a concept that deserves some thorough scrutiny (the idea that all sexual assault everywhere across all cultures is only about one thing?), again, he doesn't seem to have a good understanding of the cultural and social dynamics surrounding sex roles and sexual assault. For example, he argues that feminists assert that "fear of rape has to be pounded into women by ... social influence." This is a distortion of an assertion by feminist thinkers that fear of rape--in particular, fear of "stranger rape," the least common form of rape--is often deployed as a tactic to limit women's behavior, freedom, and freedom of choice. For example, traditional societies that place heavy restrictions on women's dress, appearance and behavior often claim they are doing so in order to "protect" them.
His assertion that countries with far more rigid gender roles demonstrate far fewer rates of rape overlooks the fact that societies with rigid gender roles and norms will often very severely penalize rape victims who come forward. Therefore the seemingly low rate of sexual assault in these societies cannot *by any means* be taken at face value. Furthermore, many incidents which are considered rape in modern Western society are often not so considered in more traditional societies (or indeed, in our own, until very recently). So for example in the case of marital rape, though the woman knows she did not consent to sex, and though she experiences great distress over the event, she will not consider it rape because according to the norms of her society she does not have the right to refuse sex with her husband, so therefore she "cannot" be raped by him. This also affects rape statistics. Finally, in seeking to demonstrate that rape is about sex, he overlooks many situations where it is *also* about power. For example, he asserts that rapists tend to be males with marginal status in society. Perhaps many of them are, but how about those who are not? For example, the captain of industry who is accustomed to getting his way in every situation and will not take no for an answer from his lowly secretary?
Pinker does do a very good job laying out the history behind the "blank slate" approach and explaining some of the ideological reasons why people are so committed to this position--and he does indicate that this position is often adopted for irreproachable moral reasons; his main issue is that this adoption often leads to distortions of the evidence being presented as fact. He is plain about how and why he thinks the ideological use of bioloical data is wrongheaded and harmful. His reasoning is often well-thought-out and comprehensive, based on the information he presents. However, in his drive to bring the "nature" side into prominence, I feel he overly rejects the influence of culture. As previously stated, I also have qualms about the accuracy of much of the information he tosses in; based on the matters of which I have knowledge, Pinker does not always adequately grasp the nuances of the examples he's using. However whether you agree or disagree with him, there's plenty of food for thought here. The bottom line is, as an anthropologist, Pinker's a great biologist. If he grasped the culture better, this would be a five-star book.
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