Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?
More Quotes from 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
For example, parents who talk a lot to their children have kids with better language skills, parents who spank have children who grow up to be violent, parents who are neither too authoritarian or too lenient have children who are well-adjusted, and so on.
Steven Pinker
My laptop has freed me to travel.
Steven Pinker
All of us have a theory about human nature.
Steven Pinker
Even if he does occasionally hurt people's feelings -- he occasionally hurts my feelings -- but I'm a big boy. I can get over it. I can argue back. We really need somebody to question the way a university is run.
Steven Pinker
Political equality consists of recognizing, as the Constitution says, that people have certain inalienable rights, namely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Recognizing those rights is not the same thing as believing that people are indistinguishable in every respect.
Steven Pinker
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Mind QuotesBased on Keywords: baggage, weighted
Whatever help we may want from the international community now or in the future, we want to make sure that this help is tailored to help our people to help themselves.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
It's hard to start from the bottom.
Lou Duva
It's going to seem idiotic to say this, but I think that at a given moment we all need a place to ourselves where we can refuge ourselves and cut ourselves off from the world.
Milla Jovovich