Steven Pinker’s profound and thought provoking work “The Blank Slate” is both a guided tour through the cognitive neurosciences (sociobiology, behavioral genetics, evolutionary psychology among others); as well as a blueprint for social & political reform. This is despite the fact that much of the book is a detailed attack on the ideological doctrines that underpin traditional reformist agendas. He calls these the “holy trinity” of “a blank slate” (that human minds are totally plastic and formed for good or ill, success or failure, solely by environment, including education etc); of “the noble savage” (that culture and society are to blame for evils such as violence, discrimination etc); and of the “ghost in the machine” (that personality and agency do not reside in our brain but exists essentially as pure spirit outside the realms of biology or physics)
This is not to say Pinker advocates some sort of biological determinism or that there is a gene for every behavior. He explicitly and repeatedly denies such a stance. Heritability is not an “all or nothing” subject but a realm of seemingly limitless subtlety and complexity, but it is also decidedly not a realm of infinite plasticity.
A large part of the early chapters is spent explaining why such a work is needed – to justify the place of these sciences in the face of some very unscientific attacks on the works and persons of the pioneers in these fields.
We are then taken through a wonderful survey of the findings uncovered by the neurosciences that provide inescapable evidence of our common human nature.
I was personally captivated by the implications of an evolutionary understanding of the faculties of learning, and the alternative vision of school education as a place to acquire skills for living in a modern world, things for which evolution has not yet had time to select and produce instincts (in contrast to our instinctive and unschooled abilities to walk, to acquire language, to perceive intention behind other people’s behavior etc). A whole new curriculum could be based on an understanding of what our brain can do easily and how to use these abilities to learn new and unintuitive skills such as mathematics and economics.
I was also particularly struck by a section in which he redefined the contrasting traditional political tendancies “left” and “right” into novel descriptors: “Utopian Vision” and “Tragic Vision”, reflecting different underlying attitudes to human nature. Pinker himself says the neurosciences are coming down on the side of the Tragic Vision – an inherent and hence constrained human nature, but denies this means the “right” is necessarily right, or that the leftist impulse must be abandoned. He quotes numerous left-leaning philosophers and activists striving to realign the egalitarian agenda to the reality of a human nature whose millenia-old impulses have guided our species to survive and are impossible to eradicate. He then proceeds to analyse a series of “hot button” social topics (politics; violence, including crime and war; gender and rape; childhood and personality development; and art). In each topic his discussion discomforts the prevailing orthodoxy but his explanation of the science supporting his case is always prefixed by a careful statement and affirmation of liberal and progressive goals and principles and repudiation of injustice, discrimination or oppression. In each case his aim is to show how genuine progress might be achievable and constructive if account is taken of scientifically demonstrated and ineradicable human tendencies rather than holding dogmas or utopian theories based on the blank slate and its fellows. This is not merely a matter of theory but of great social import and potentially lifesaving. For instance his insistence that the dogma of “rape not being about sex but about power” is biologically unsustainable and effectively shuts even the consideration of alternative biologically-grounded approaches to its eradication, instead of the current hopeless attempts to reprogram the brain of offenders. Likewise his analysis of violence as an evolutionary strategy rather than a cultural artefact that could be wished away by cultural re-engineering offers policy-makers promising and practical lines of approach to reduce violent crime in our communities and reduce wars between nations.
The practicality of his analysis offers a ready made political program for any party brave enough to defy both the anti-cognitive scientific intelligentia of the left and the religious fundamentalists of the right, and to pitch a new course appealing to the common sense and common nature of ordinary concerned citizens.
I found this to be a liberating book, freeing me to trust my own instincts for instance in childraising and art, rather than be bound by the controlling doctrines of a supposed expert class.
After reading it I am convinced a course in cognative neurosciences should be an essential prerequisite for students of humanities, especially philosophy, politics and law.
