The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

By: Steven Pinker  

Buy it now at Amazon.com!

Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5

Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Release Date: 2003-08-26

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A definitive case - Pinker presents nothing new, he is simply popularizing and tracing out the implications of the discoveries in the sciences of human nature. The book is very enjoyable to read. He rips apart such nuisance ideologies as relativism, constructionism, Utopianism, gender-feminism, and modernism/post-modernism. Most importantly, he takes the moral high ground, showing that the Blank Slate is an unacceptable moral position. The book drips with insights. For example, he shows that parents have virtually no influence on how their children turn out, thus invalidating a huge body of parenting advice. I was surprised at how well read Pinker is, the book is remarkably cross-disciplinary. He definitely did his homework.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
"that eternally fascinating thing we call human nature" - First of all, this is one of the best science books I have read. It is very long and detailed, and some have complained about the thoroughness of the work, but as such, it reminded me of how it was to read "On the Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin. It is that well argued, with copious references, and places the idea of the human brain as a blank slate in the trash bin where it belongs with flat earth theory and intelligent design.

It is difficult to review this book which already has over 200 very detailed reviews, so my focus on this review will be the error of some of the negative reviews.

The thesis of this book is simply that there is such a thing as human nature. The reason the argument is being put forth in the book is because there have been three main alternate hypotheses for what humans are guided by in regard to their minds. The three ideas that have been argued in the past have been:

1. The Blank Slate
2. The Noble Savage
3. The Ghost in the Machine

These may be self-explanatory, but the blank slate is the idea that the brain has no built in propensities, and thus may be entirely guided and developed by environment. The noble savage is the idea that native man without civilization is much more gentle and peaceable than civilized man. The ghost in the machine is the idea promoted by many religions that there is a spirit or soul which is the being, and so the brain is not really the source of the mind.

It appears many of the negative reviews have spouted many of the arguments for one of these ideas, and therefore the reviewers may not have actually read the book, wherein Pinker thoroughly shreds each of these ideas, and the arguments put forth by the reviewers.

I will not explain Pinker's view of human nature in detail here, as it is done in great detail in the book, as well as in many of the excellent reviews already present, but I will simply say that the theory he promotes is infinitely more reasonable, being an amalgam of genetics, epigenetics, biological development, and environment, in varying degrees. I leave it to the intelligent reader to come to their own conclusions as to which of these ideas has the most merit, and read the book if you want to read one of the most erudite books of our time, keeping in mind that to explain a thing is not to endorse ugly side effects of that thing.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Striding the divide between social and hard sciences - I picked up The Blank Slate as a follow up book after reading the excellent Matt Ridley's The Red Queen - Sex and The Evolution of Human Nature. Call me stupid but I thought at first The blank Slate to be a counterpoint to The Red Queen. Despite of the book's title Steven Pinker does not endorse the Blank Slate vision. The subtitle is the obvious giveaway: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.

Pinker's book is a criticism of the tripod that makes up the modern denial of human nature::

1 - The Blank Slate vision or the belief that humans are "infinitely malleable" as stated by O'Brian, the government agent in Orwell's 1984;
2 - The Noble Savage concept or the idyllic notion that in the natural state humans are selfless, peaceful and untroubled;
3 - The Ghost in the Machine doctrine or the idea that mind and body are made up of two different materials that can even exist separately.

Pinker's is a somewhat crooked tripod I must say. It barely stands up since the Ghost in the Machine leg is not very well developed. My take is that the Ghost in the Machine is where a lot of otherwise rational people succumb to superstition and it is also where a book can start to hurt feelings. Richard Dawkins, writer of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, The God Delusion, and many other great books would press on but Pinker is more gentle and controversy averse, I suppose.

Pinker criticises the Blank Slate tripod by doing a thorough bibliographical review and showing that the common fears that are usually placated by the tripod are undeserved. The common fears are::

1 - The Fear of Inequality - If humans are born with innate differences these differences could grow into inequalities among people;
2 - The Fear of Imperfectability - If we are born already saddled with our sins and flaws any effort to improve society would be a waste of time;
3 - The Fear of Determinism - The fear of legal defences starting with "my genes made me do it" or "biology ate my homework";
4 - The Fear of Nihilism - The fear that life would lose its meaning if, after all, our motives and values are mere products of the physiology of the brain.

The Blank Slate strides the divide between social sciences and - for lack of a better word - hard sciences but with a much firmer foot on the social sciences side. Instead of throwing at us the latest and greatest scientific discovery that supposedly rebuffs one of the Blank Slate tripod legs Pinker prefers to use old-school philosophy, sociology, ethnography or psychology to convince the reader that the fear that gave rise to the tripod leg was unwarranted to start with.

The book was one of the two 2003 general nonfiction Pulitzer finalists. In my humble opinion it deserved the prize.

Leonardo Alves
Belo Horizonte - Brazil - 2010

Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Reasoned discourse for a field overrun by political correctness - Steven Pinker, the eminent cognitive scientist formerly of MIT (now at Harvard), has produced an intelligent, eloquent treatise in support of human nature; daring to tread where many others before him have who unfortunately faced the wrath of naive, uninformed, and simply dogmatic intellectuals and the easily duped public at large. The book is structured well, beginning with the definition and a cultural rehashing of the modern notion of the blank slate & its corollary the noble savage and moving on to a clear, evidence-based, factual rebuttal of many of the core tenets of this ideology that had once come to dominate politic ideologies (particularly communism with its denunciation of the individual), social institutions (role of parenting, the feminism movement) and even the arts (with the rise of modern & post-modern art). It is an enjoyable read and very enlightening on many contentious topics; however the content falls mostly in the realm of "soft science" as many other reviewers have noted. I particularly enjoyed the discussion on the non-genetic explanations of why identical twins (who share all the genes) have personalities that are 50% correlated even when raised together or apart; and that findings have suggested the shared environment of the home does not explain the other 50%. The remaining explanation is what Pinker & others term the "unique environment," the particular life experiences that individuals bear witness to coupled with the unexplainable wiring up of the brain of the nascent uterus while in the womb. Very eye opening stuff. Definitely a worth while read.

Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Nature vs. Nurture - Mr. Pinker attempts a summary of the intellectual/academic debate over whether the biological organism that is a human being can explain human behavior. Mr. Pinker's view is that human behavior "starts" with the genetic component of humans, culminating in the ultimate derivation of human values. The book is a "slow read." Fortunately, Mr. Pinker is very repetitious, as if he realizes that the concepts he presents will be difficult to swallow for many. He debunks the "Blank Slate," the "Noble Savage," and the "Ghost in the Machine" beliefs of those who are convinced that human behavior and values are learned after one is born; the same believe that to deny this proposition is to support determinism and eugenics, as well as various rationales for the more powerful to oppress and subject those who are identified as "lesser beings," so to speak. The book is erudite in places, down-to-earth in others, and even whimsical at times. I ordered it for a relative - it took me about a year to read the book to understanding. Copiously footnoted and referenced, it should lead the inquisitive reader to a library of source material for further thought and discussion of this relatively recent (90s and new milennium) debate.

--> Find out more about "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" at Amazon.com or Order Now