Pinker: There are people who believe man has no nature. Such a belief is obviously discrediting of the ideas that led to it. I am criticizing those ideas in this lecture and in my book The Blank Slate.
JJ: What?!? I never heard of such a thing! Who can deny babies are born knowing how to suckle?
Clayton: Pinker’s right - he actually quotes people to prove his point. But don’t confuse his assertion with a claim that the SSSM denies any role whatsoever for nature. Only some extremists do that. It is the ideas behind the ridiculous claims that he quotes that he’s actually targeting.
JJ: So I take it this means you are suggesting Pinker is one of these people “straw-manning” the “real” issue?
Clayton: No, those who cling to the SSSM in the face of the advances of Evolutionary Psychology are asserting (I’m not going to dig up cites right now, look at the link Aristippus gave, there are some adversarial critics linked from there) that Pinker et. al. are strawmanning the SSSM. Pinker’s quotes (for example of Gould) are what they are. They don’t prove that all who hold to the SSSM hold those beliefs, only that such beliefs are possible within the umbrella of the SSSM, which suggests that there’s something seriously wrong with the SSSM. Which is the point of his lectures and books.
Neither. Go back to my illustration of a theory of physics in which some physicists believe that it is possible to float by force of will. Let’s say I am debunking this theory of physics and I open my lecture with the following quote:
" ‘It is possible, by dint of will, to defy the ‘law’ of gravity and float in mid-air.’ This is quote from a leading proponent of the Foo Theory of Physics which I will refute in this lecture. The fact that anyone who holds to the Foo Theory of Physics can derive such ridiculous conclusions on that basis shows that there is something seriously wrong with the Foo Theory."
Someone in the audience stands up and shouts “You’re strawmanning Foo Theory, not all Foo Theorists believe this, only a few Foo Theorists have made such assertions.” To which my response would be “OK, so then you’re claiming I’ve misunderstood Foo Theory - it is not possible to claim on the basis of Foo Theory that one might be able to defy the ‘law’ of gravity?”
There is nothing in the SSSM that prevents complete denial of human nature. That is the problem. Such a theory of human behavior is clearly deficient. EP simply points this out: a theory of human behavior in which it is possible to completely deny all human nature (and in which some theorists do) is useless, at best, harmful and misleading at worst. Those who want to deny human nature (often, for motivated reasons) can fly under the same rubric with more fair-minded social scientists.
The statistical methods of the SSSM avoid entirely the question of human behavioral dispositions and even where they treat such questions, they do not present a causal theory, only meaningless statistical correlations. Pinker says in the above lecture: almost all parenting studies ever done are useless. Not wrong, useless. They are useless because they do not control for heritability, so there is no way to determine how much - if any - of the studied effect is the result of the parents’ behavior (e.g. violent behavior) and how much is the result of the parents’ genes (e.g. heritable disposition to violent behavior).
The title of his book - The Blank Slate - captures the essence of the SSSM. Man’s mind is a blank slate that is filled in by the particular circumstances of his culture and upbringing. Of course, the details get really complicated but that doesn’t change the underlying stance of the SSSM - man has no innate disposition. But specific studies published by scientists who adhere to the SSSM rarely discuss such fundamental issues because it is all just left unsaid and taken for granted as “standard scientific practice.”
This is not entirely unlike how mainstream economists ply their trade, publishing useless statistical studies of real data but without any kind of causal theory. This is why I think that Austrians should feel some kind of fraternity with Evolutionary Psychologists.
I remember as a child that eventually I started drawing. I picked up crayons at some point and drew trees, my family, the usual toddler things. Then I began drawing things from cartoons, movies, dinosaurs, all kinds of things.
The thing is my earliest memories are only knowing crayons existed. I knew crayons existed before I knew the concept of drawing, ie I had the urge to draw. While I was taught that crayons, pencils etc could be used to write and mark things down on paper, I never once received any direct motivation or cue from my parents/other kids/etc that they could be used to recreate images and invent things in my imagination as well as things that inspired me. This is all largely being in the house as a toddler up through kindergarten where I reached a point where I would leave the household and be with peers.
I was nurtured to view the crayon as a writing tool. Yet was it entirely direct input from society that taught me how to use them to draw imaginary creatures and places too, or was there a more subtle mixture of different elements, external and internal here?
Just something I’ve thought about and would be interested in opinions.
EP is redundant. If you look at the facts produced by biological research you can see that there is a combination of neural links that develop independent of experiential feedback and neural links that develop from experiential feedback. The two are not in isolation of each other. For example, you can experience something that changes your chemical balance, which physically changes the brain. That same result can come from genes affecting that chemical action. So, you could think of genes as a program for inter-generational memory reconstruction and learning as in vivo memory construction that expires upon death. I suppose “instinct” refers to the former. How to know how much a case behaviour is from one and the other is the only real challenge here.
I was not aware that “blank state” was so popular. It must be a “social science” thing.
It is redundant for establishing that man has a nature. It is not redundant for filling out the details of what that nature is.
I would like to see someone with EP credential discuss the connection between the human nature debate in social science and the same debate in theology which, in many ways, mirrors the social science debate. Calvinists believe that humans have very specific attributes (dispositions) whereas Armenian Protestants either deny this or at least heavily de-emphasize it. Catholics and Armenian Protestants are in agreement on this point (man has little or no innate disposition when he is born).
In fact, tabula rasa plays a crucial role in Catholic/Armenian theodicy (reconciliation of the existence of evil with God’s goodness and omnipotence). Their argument is that each infant is born “neutral” with no disposition towards either good or evil. In addition, God grants them free will in order that they can be moral agents with the caveat that they alone are responsible for whatever evil they bring into the world through their own choices. Often, this theological line of thinking is accompanied with some concept of an “age of accountability” - some say 11, others 13, etc. According to this line of thinking, God is not responsible for evil because he created man a blank slate. Man - by virtue of having been created neutral and yet choosing to do evil - is the agent solely responsible for the existence of evil. This does not violate God’s omnipotence because it is a logical condition for moral agency that the moral agent have plenary power to choose, that is, to not be subject to any sort of predestination.
Just wanted to say that I’m pretty close to finishing Blank Slate now and it’s definitely one of my favorite books of all time. The book is absolutely chock full of brilliant insights that often put words to thoughts I’d sort of already had but couldn’t find grounds for or flesh out properly. Anyways I highly recommend it.
I presume you mean supposed materialistic evolution (of first dead matter to become living primitive organism and secondly of primitive organisms to become higher order organism) and social evolutions (the way society changes over period from primitive to more advanced). Both have elements of fiction to it, while I think some of the later was at least observable within long recorded periods.
Now reflect on this and you’ll see what kind of garbage that is. The mind needs to have a lot into place (in terms of biological infrastructure as well) in order to be receptive to nature. And from what I know there are even far more problems with this statement of blank state and behavioral moldability. Some of those have already be mentioned.
How can anyone seriously separate the laws of biology and culture? Most philosophers didn’t. And I recall Plato, Bacon, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche arguing for a strong relationship.
The Blank slate theory combined with the denial of human nature and postulate of human moldability lends it self to justify a state agency to program and reprogram people “for their own good”. It’s kind of an argument that those that are “more advanced” have now to reprogram those that are “less advanced”. It’s a bit of Marxism-Leninism in new clothes.
@JJ: Just now watched his first installment. He cites studies showing that environment affects behavior and brain - but this is irrelevant to the point of the EPs who assert that both genes and environment inform behavior. The point is that the slate is not blank and the brain is not a “general-purpose computation device.”
The slate already has things written on it, some of them put there by our genes, some of them put there by our environment. We cannot erase and re-write our slate as we see fit.
The brain is comprised of special-purpose computational modules designed to solve specific problems in our environment. There is variation in these modules between individuals, just as there are variations in human anatomy between individuals. But these variations are parametric, not qualitative - there are no anatomically normal humans with three arms or no elbows or whatever.
Nothing Molyneux says does the slightest damage to this position.
It is true that typically Calvinists emphasise the (sinful) nature of man and hold a compatibilst position on freedom of the will i.e. freedom of the will is acting in accordance with ones nature. It is also true that Arminians (the term derived from Joseph Arminius) tend to down play man’s nature and come accross as holding the neutrality of the nature of man to retain man’s freedom of the will this time broadly defined as the power of contrary choice. I’m not as familiar with the Catholic position but given their emphasis on natural law I don’t think they’d down play man’s nature that much.
Related to this is the much underdiscussed traducianism vs creationism- it is a debate on the origin of the soul. The former holds that in procreation the man and the woman create a new soul embedded withing the embyo, the latter holds in procreation the physical embryo is created but the soul is independently created and attached by God.
This has huge implications for the doctrine of original sin and the problem of evil. Some Arminians hold the creationist position and thus reject orginal sin (defined here as a general disposition towards sin) so hold a tabula rasa position; this is because it would require that God make something sinful. If one holds the traducian position then the sinful seed of Adam is no problem as Adam was created good by God but his sinful seed was created by Eve and himself.
On the age of accountability it can split Arminian/Calvinist but not necessarily. I think it’s more Baptist/ Presbyterian- for the Baptist one only joins the community when one has personal faith in Christ whereas the latter it can ALSO take place as being a member of a believing household. So the Baptist would tend to hold universal infant salvation at their deaths since they haven’t been condemned by creation (Romans 1) since their cognitive faculties aren’t developed enough (the Calvinist Baptist John Piper holds this position); and the Presbyterian would hold the children of believers would be save whereas those of unbelievers would not; however when the children of believers reached a certain age they would then be accountable. If you are a Calvinist though God’s predestination undergirds all of this.
For the record I’m a Traducian Open Theist. I firmly believe man’s nature is corrupt but that libertarian freedom of the will is retain i.e we have the power of contrary choice. So much so that I believe the future literally unknowable since it does not and has not existed even to God; I call this dynamic omnipotance. The parts he does “know” derive from his power to bring about those events he has decided for example the second coming; so the future is partially open hence the Open Theist label
@Physiocrat: (this is a quick reply, going to bed…)
I was raised Calvinist (Reformed Baptist, to be specific). Believe it or not, I’ve actually debated open theists on internet theology forums, LOL. Anyway, it’s definitely an interesting subject and I am highly fascinated by the formative effect that religious belief and practice have on the social order.
What does the mind or bodies structure in the history of a few past Man-Ape’s that somone randomly chose and constructed a narrative around matter? There is no possible way this matters one way or the other in any academic sense, if all we are doing is afirming how people acted. It is a minor technical point.
If Pinker is merely a tradesman, acting as an auto mechanic and telling me how to soup up my car for maximum advantage, so be it. Than he can market his product just like every other auto maker and let the market decide how satisfactory it is.
Furthermore, I simply just don’t think it’s true that the mainstream academic world thinks blank slate is correct. I was under the impression that was a very antiquated model. Furthermore, I honestly thought this form of scientism has been en vogue since the late 19th/early 20th century. I can’t say for sure, but all my sociology classes certainly had hard ons for behaviorism, evolutionary psych, cog psych, model making econ, etc.
Either way, I would like a citation that Blank Slate is mainstream, as that is a very surprising claim to me.
Please follow the links I provided and look up their cites showing both the historical roots of tabula rasa as well as contemporary thinkers expressing support for this concept (Stephen J. Gould’s quote is particularly extreme). Behaviorism is absolutely compatible with the tabula rasa theory of human behavior. In fact, if you look at the work of a behaviorist like Donald Ewen Cameron (of MK ULTRA infamy), you see that his underlying theory of mind was precisely tabula rasa - he was trying to “erase the slate” through intense, extended electro-chemical torture. He did prove that you can inflict permanent amnesia through such torture but there is no reason to believe that people who went through his program actually were brought back to a “neutral” state of any sort.
Furthermore, I simply just don’t think it’s true that the mainstream academic world thinks blank slate is correct. I was under the impression that was a very antiquated model. Furthermore, I honestly thought this form of scientism has been en vogue since the late 19th/early 20th century. I can’t say for sure, but all my sociology classes certainly had hard ons for behaviorism, evolutionary psych, cog psych, model making econ, etc.
Either way, I would like a citation that Blank Slate is mainstream, as that is a very surprising claim to me.
“Blank slate” dogma is definitely hegemonial within mainstream (meaning: state sponsored and public) academia. Of course there is no official directive that states professors, researchers and lectures have to stipulate the truth of blank slate egality. But try to stipulate race or gender differences, or just dare to mention that social position isn’t to blame on society alone and see what the responses are. I did mention the importance of ancestry for forming identity once and the lecturers innuendo suggested that I would be something in the line of a Naziwhowantstogassixmillionshoes. I did however refrain from debating the falsity or absurdity of those implied claims and left it, as I also know that the lecturer wasn’t alone with that kind of beliefs. You may ask what does have identity to do with (blank) slate. Well, stressing the ancestry for forming identity has its reason in the fact that one is a copy of ones parents inheritance giving one a initial content and that from this one shapes though and feeling from birth onward. So there is some innateness, but politically correct academics do not like to hear this, due to their prior emotional investment in egalitarianism.
Of course there are also many academics and intellectuals that do disagree with this, but they also know from where the wind is blowing. So they rather shut up on the subject and do what they do in a less dangerous manner.
You are right to think this could be very compatible with Austrian thought,and even ought be studied, particularly for Hayekian accented social theory. To attack it or question it from an “Austrian perspective”, even if I may ultimately disagree with it, demands a more sophistacted answer or even line of questioning, which I did not provide.