People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections.
More Quotes from Steven Pinker:
But a conception of human nature, and its connections to other fields such as politics and the arts, have been there from time immemorial.Steven Pinker
I think that there is a quasi-religious theory of human nature that is prevalent among pundits and intellectuals, which includes both empirical assumptions about how the mind works and a set of values that people hang on those assumptions.
Steven Pinker
Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate.
Steven Pinker
I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.
Steven Pinker
Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.
Steven Pinker
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.
Steven Pinker
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