Here is what Steve Pinker writes in his article "The Blank Slate" for the magazine "General Psychology":
Now, help me out here, how is that not a "Blank Slate" position?
There is no-one in the social sciences, as far as I am aware, that suggests that genetics has nothing to do with how we turn out. For as long as I have been talking to people in the social sciences they have said that how someone turns out is partly due to their genes and partly due to their environment, culture, society, physical environment etc.
Pinker tries to pretend that there is a difference between what he is saying and what the social sciences say in general by picking someone with an extreme position, Ashley Montagu, and claims that this view is 'typical'. In fact it is not even typical of Montagu's claims as you can easily find him clarifying that things like laughing and crying are genetically programmed just as they are in other animals.
And, as I said, Montagu's claims are not typical for the social sciences.
The other example Pinker gives in this article is Arnold Schwartznegger. I am not sure how Pinker could have concluded that Arnie is the exemplar of the social sciences.
What the social sciences tend to reject is the "breeding is everything" opinion which says that poor people are poor because they have inferior breeding and that rich people are rich due to superior breeding and that everybody should just know their place and not try to get above themselves. I don't think that Pinker is defending that view.
So let's get away from this idea that Pinker's view is any different to the view that has been taken by the social sciences since at least the 1960's
PS Incidentally, I am confused as to why Pinker believes that the only part of a child's culture, society and behaviour that doesn't influence them is the part that they have spent most time with, ie their parents.
Quote:
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What all this suggests is that children are shaped not by their parents, but in part—but only in part—by their genes; in part by their culture, both the culture of the surrounding society and the children’s own culture, which we condescendingly call their peer group; and in large part by sheer chance—chance events in the development of the brain in utero, such as whether some neurons zigged or zagged at a particular day in brain development, and perhaps chance events in life, such as whether at some point you were chased by a dog, or inhaled a virus, or were dropped on your head, or got the top bunk bed as opposed to the bottom bunk bed. |
There is no-one in the social sciences, as far as I am aware, that suggests that genetics has nothing to do with how we turn out. For as long as I have been talking to people in the social sciences they have said that how someone turns out is partly due to their genes and partly due to their environment, culture, society, physical environment etc.
Pinker tries to pretend that there is a difference between what he is saying and what the social sciences say in general by picking someone with an extreme position, Ashley Montagu, and claims that this view is 'typical'. In fact it is not even typical of Montagu's claims as you can easily find him clarifying that things like laughing and crying are genetically programmed just as they are in other animals.
And, as I said, Montagu's claims are not typical for the social sciences.
The other example Pinker gives in this article is Arnold Schwartznegger. I am not sure how Pinker could have concluded that Arnie is the exemplar of the social sciences.
What the social sciences tend to reject is the "breeding is everything" opinion which says that poor people are poor because they have inferior breeding and that rich people are rich due to superior breeding and that everybody should just know their place and not try to get above themselves. I don't think that Pinker is defending that view.
So let's get away from this idea that Pinker's view is any different to the view that has been taken by the social sciences since at least the 1960's
PS Incidentally, I am confused as to why Pinker believes that the only part of a child's culture, society and behaviour that doesn't influence them is the part that they have spent most time with, ie their parents.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/3rhtZWz
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