The Blank Slate

Thinkers have viewed the Blank Slate as a “guarantor of political equality” (141) because, if we are all born the same, we are equal. If we are not, the reasoning goes, discrimination, Social Darwinism, eugenics, and other morally offensive policies are justified.

Pinker disagrees. He believes that a universal human nature endows us all with cognitive and emotional faculties. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius wrote, “Men’s natures are all alike; it is their habits that carry them far apart” (142). The study of human nature has revealed our similarities more than our differences; natural selection tends to homogenize species by selecting for certain genes. Pinker explains that as a species, we have little genetic variability because we went through a population bottleneck about 100,000 years ago. After this bottleneck, different races emerged, which Pinker describes as “adaptations to climate” (143). He writes, “People are qualitatively the same but may differ quantitatively” (143). These quantitative differences are greater among individual members of any group than between the groups.

Though some people like to think of races merely as social constructions, differences among people do exist. Pinker cites the biological anthropologist Vincent Sarich, who describes race, in Pinker’s words, as “a very large and partly inbred family” (144). Until recently, people lived and bred with others in their geographical region, so they are more similar to others from their region than to people from other regions. However, Pinker does not believe in a genetic explanation for the difference between whites and blacks with regard to intelligence, and notes that lower IQ scores between groups are likely the result of marginalization.

Pinker thinks that discoveries about human nature should not justify racism in any situation: “Far from being conducive to discrimination, a conception of human nature is the reason we oppose it” (145). All humans can be assumed to have certain qualities in common; it is clear that they would all oppose being treated as slaves, for example. He writes that political equality is a moral position. We can make the moral stance as a society that group differences cannot be used to treat people differently. He also writes that if we have more information about an individual, we are less likely to use averages about sex or race to judge that person.

Intellectuals such as Gould have written about the fact that there is no such thing as innate intelligence, but Pinker believes that the existence of differences between people’s talents does not need to lead to support of Social Darwinism. Innate intelligence is only one factor that may contribute to success and does not mean that success is deserved. This is the “naturalistic fallacy” (150), or the belief that something natural is inherently good. In addition, if we mistakenly believe that people in different stations of life are inherently different, we don’t recognize the advantages they have likely had. For example, if people assumed to be the same wind up wealthier and are assumed to be greedier, people can turn to dangerous policies (such those practiced in the former Soviet Union) to punish those they consider rapacious. 

Eugenics also does not have to be the outcome of recognizing innate differences if we separate human values from biological facts. Even if we recognize people’s individual traits, it is nearly impossible to breed for these traits, and we can prohibit the government from having the power to do so. Pinker discusses Hitler’s misuse of biology in perverted versions of Social Darwinism and writes that it is important not to trivialize Nazism by using it in intellectual infighting. If we suppressed everything the Nazis believed in, we would also have to censor the idea of the germ theory of disease, romanticism, linguistics, and religious beliefs. Moreover, misuse of Marxism also led to countless deaths even though that philosophy does not believe in inherent differences. In other words, government-sponsored mass murder can come from the belief in difference or similarity.

Pinker explores how people also fear the idea that human nature is not perfectible. The Romantic poets, for example, feared that if people were fundamentally rotten, there was no reason to try to improve the world. this idea makes particular sense given the large-scale atrocities of the 20th century. In addition, feminists oppose the idea of that men have an innately selfish sexual motive, one that at its worst extremes is used as an excuse for rape. In other words, if we accept selfishness as innate, we might come to regard it as good.

This fear of imperfectibility and the embrace of the Blank Slate that results are rooted in the “naturalistic fallacy”—the idea that what is natural is good—and its inverse the “moralistic fallacy”—the idea that if a trait is moral, it can be found in nature. Intellectuals embrace this idea, as do people on the religious and cultural right who condemn practices such as homosexuality as “unnatural” (164).

However, as Pinker writes, “discoveries about human nature do not, by themselves, dictate our choices” (164). Biological facts have to be combined with a moral thought. For example, even if the impulse to rape is a part of human nature, it does not supersede a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and thus cannot be justified. In fact, the idea that an impulse translates into behavior is a product of the idea of the Blank Slate. However, if we believe that the mind is a complex system with many parts, an urge is just one part of the human system. The structures underlying empathy and other emotions are combinatorial; input can change the outcome. Emphasizing human nature can help us understand our progress as social beings and thus perpetuate it, increasing our capacity for empathy and cooperation.

American journalist Robert Wright explains how human nature leads to an expansion of the circle of human cooperation—via cognitive know-how, language, and emotional repertoires that include sympathy, trust, etc. Once the evolution of the expansive moral circle is in place, a psychological awareness can develop about how similar others are to ourselves. We may be selfish, but through a selfish desire for cooperation, we can peacefully coexist.

Reshaping human behavior can exact a cost on our freedom and happiness. This why most people with utopian or totalitarian visions have failed in the past. Behaviorists and social scientists have sometimes taken the idea of social engineering too far. However, in order to be successful in making social change, we must be aware of our own cognitive and moral resources. 

This chapter is about the fear that we are not the masters of our own choices, that we lack personal accountability, and that biology will reveal us to be not responsible for our own choices. In other words, people might argue, “Darwin made me do it” (176). Pinker writes that behavior is never entirely predictable, and there is no system of punishment that will totally eradicate harmful actions.

Environmental factors are often used as pretexts for bad behavior. These pretexts often pin the cause for violence on trauma, particularly childhood trauma. Pinker cites various examples, including a statement by Hillary Clinton that blames her husband’s infidelity on the conflict between his mother and grandmother when he was little. Pinker writes that these examples involve “a confusion of explanation with exculpation” (179). In other words, the causes of behavior aren’t excuses for them.

Pinker writes that we don’t need to solve the age-old debate about free will versus determinism to think about what we want the idea of personal responsibility to achieve. We refrain from punishing those who were unaware that their actions would cause harm, such as children and the insane because punishing them would have no effect on deterring others. However, Pinker write that knowing more about the mind might cause us to expand what we are held responsible for, rather than diminishing this domain. For example, if we believe men are more likely to commit violence against women, we could punish this behavior more harshly as a deterrent.

Pinker writes that we don’t need to solve the question of whether people have free will to save the idea of personal responsibility. He refutes the fallacy that biological explanations and environmental explanations for behavior erode the meaning of responsibility any more so than a belief in the soul does.

The last fear of a biological explanation for the nature of the mind is that it will cause us to lose the meaning of our lives. Some of this is based on religious belief. Pinker quotes Pope John Paul II who said that the soul could not have come “from the forces of living matter” (187). Pinker’s intention is “to refute the accusation that a materialistic view of the mind is inherently amoral and that religious conceptions are to be favored because they are inherently more humane” (187).

He writes that humans have developed a moral sense and that over the course of history, we have expanded the number of people we extend this sense to. He posits that the ultimate test of whether moral sense is innate or induced by religion is to ask people whether they would still be generous and kind if God commanded them otherwise. He says that throughout history, God has commanded people to carry out cruelties such as burning witches and killing heretics. He also writes that the idea of the mind as an organ is no less meaningful than the idea of the soul and notes that the belief in an everlasting soul has driven people to carry out atrocities.

Secular thinkers, too, fear that an overly biological explanation of the mind robs life of its meaning. However, people often confuse proximate and ultimate causation. Though natural selection ultimately relies on an innately selfish desire to pass along our genes, proximately, it can produce unselfish actions including love for one’s children and family. Furthermore, the idea that right and wrong are no more than neural concepts in our brain does not mean that they do not exist. Like number systems, morality has evolved in similar ways across different cultures. Pinker notes how the golden rule—the imperative to treat others as you would want to be treated yourself—was advocated in Leviticus and in the Mahabharata. Pinker writes, “a moral sense is part of the standard equipment of the human mind” (193). For Pinker, biological science does not undermine moral values; rather, it sharpens our ethics.