Steven Pinker Quotes on Mind (9 Quotes)

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

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.

Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?

There's no reason that we should give up that lever on people's behavior - namely, the inhibition systems of the brain - just because we're coming to understand more about the temptation systems.

During the past century the doctrine of the blank slate has set the agenda for much of the social sciences and humanities, ... ... Psychology has sought to explain all thought, feeling, and behavior with a few simple mechanisms of learning.

Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.

But the newest research is showing that many properties of the brain are genetically organized, and don't depend on information coming in from the senses.

Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?