To: Dr. Pinker, From: A Cranky Economist

It seems to me that Dr. Pinker can certainly be called a materialist, at least in the sense that he is vigorously (I would even suggest zealously) committed to physical, observable, recordable, replicable mechanisms as his means of explanation for human nature, and by extension, behavior. However, in another sense, Dr. Pinker is startlingly neglectful of another sort of materialism, namely the conditions under which people live, die, think about killing each other, and indeed sometimes do kill each other. I believe this is a mistake, and will use three small examples that I hope will show that while starting with the genes is fine, Dr. Pinker does not yet have the full answer. I believe this matters, precisely because the vast majority of efforts to improve the lives of the poor and oppressed have revolved around improving the material aspects of people's lives and not using CRISPR to nip and tuck genetic code to get rid of that obnoxious arthritis or pesky homicidal rage.

Addition is a lying cheat?

For starters, let us grant a totalizing evolutionary view of human nature as a starting place. Pinker points--and quite persuasively--that there appear to be innate structures in the brain that kick start our guileless selves into being. Among these is a “number sense that allows us to grasp quantity of number” and presumably then gives rise to the ability to do addition, multiplication, and if you're both fortunate and slightly masochistic, multivariable vector calculus. But does this number sense ever break down? If so, might there be other ways in which internal neurological structures betray us?

In George Orwell’s timeless, if melodramatic parable about the silk fisted seductions of totalitarianism, 1984, the culmination of protagonist Winston’s confinement in the Ministry of Love is intense physical and psychological torture during which his grasp of reality becomes more and more tenuous, until he begins to lose track of what numbers mean and eventually capitulates to the tyrannically inane mantra, 2+2=5. Does this literary allusion prove anything? No, it does not. However, I would like use it to suggest that extreme duress can and does have its way with us, and is not the consequence of biological determinism.

If social engineering is a waste of time, why does it work?

I hold that what we might call “cultural conditioning” is the very small, but continuous erosion of the biological determinism proposed by Pinker by means of societally induced duress of one kind or another. I will venture to offer one further point of interest, as relates to his point about social engineering.

Pinker offers the very enticing view of a world free from the kinds of totalitarian social engineering that he holds the blank slate implicitly encourages. However, it seems to me that if we really were utterly creatures of biology, then social engineering, totalitarian or not, wouldn’t work. So why does it seem to be disturbingly effective? Or at the very least, why do the people who try it think it works. To harp upon a well worn example, why do so many SS officers attest to the ways in which they were brainwashed in Hitler Youth, trained and molded to believe in the cult of Der Fuhrer absolutely. It shouldn't be discounted that these officers had significant legal reasons to claim they were brainwashed, but not for nothing does the FBI call exit interviews with people who have survived Doomsday Cults “deprogramming”

Systemic Racism and Co.
Stepping back even further from the extreme case of 1984, there are many features of modern life that make a case for something other than our genes influencing behavior. Dr. Pinker talks about how we are evolutionarily hotwired to like our packets of sugar and grease, but says nothing about how contrived social structures like food deserts foist the sugar and grease upon poor citizens in inner cities across America. Moreover, systemic ghettoization of black and hispanic neighborhoods, often limiting access to education, transportation, and job prospects have a meaningful impact on societal and personal outcomes in virtually every study on the topic. The social engineering may be neither explicitly totalitarian, nor even entirely purposeful (though this is a subject of rich debate), but again, its effects seem undeniable. We are more than the sum of our genes.


I think Pinker is on to something, and perhaps biological determinism is the place we start when we are nothing but recently born pink and brown monkeys. However, the material world has its way with us in the end. Human constructions have their way with us in the end. If this is true, then changing the material conditions of our world (hopefully in the direction of greater egalitarianism) can change things for the better. Call me naive (I’ve been called worse), but count me on the side of Latour in the Science Wars.

Evolutionary Beauty

In Dutton’s video, it’s interesting to me how he starts off by saying that there are a lot of things we find (“call”) beautiful. This leads to the thought of how do we differentiate beauty? And, what is beauty? A flower is beautiful but so are Christmas lights. A sunset is beautiful but so is the mind. There really are so many things we think are pleasing to the eye. He goes on to talk about how different cultures find different things beautiful but there are cross-cultural values of beauty. According to him, it’s all evolutionary.

It’s hard to argue that. We have evolved to form opinions of people and things, and one of those opinions is whether or not its aesthetically pleasing. As we, as a species, are introduced to new things, from animals to art and music to education, we have a wider variety of objects to form opinions about, and thus, a wider variety of what we believe holds beauty.

Another interesting point he brings up is how, universally, we think that a landscape with trees, a river or body of water, and path (among other things) is beautiful, even if that sort of landscape doesn’t exist in a certain country. He then says people believe that to be natural beauty rather than artistic beauty, so of course we all think it’s amazing. But artistic beauty has to be culturally exclusive, right? No. In short, art and artistic beauty is way older than I can fathom, and all of it was beautiful.

“We find beauty in something done well” and beauty is not, in fact, in the eye of the beholder, thanks to evolution.

The evolved definition of beauty

Denise Dutton gave a tedtalk about what is beauty and were the definition of beauty evolved from. One of the the moments that Dutton gave in his lecture that confirms one of my deeply-held values that is true in the world is defining the word 'beauty'. I value all the creation that we have in this world and I believe that everyone and everything is beautiful. As Dutton said that beauty is something that is hard to define. Beauty is philosophy and physiology under the Darwinian theory (Dutton 2010). 

This moment is so strong to me in affirming what beauty can be and how it is different for everyone to see beauty in something. This was so strong to me because I have been exposed to define and judge what is beauty and how it could be. From my personal experience, one time in my Spanish class, my classmates and I have been seeing and reading articles of different people defining beauty in fashion designs, people, places and in arts. As a discussed in our Spanish class, my teacher asked me "Jocelyn, que es la bellesa para ti" "Jocelyn, what is beauty to you", at that moment I thought about how I would be answering that question. I remember saying that beauty was defined by our personal experiences and the different perspectives that a person can see something. It is something that can be defined different to each person by their personal "fits" and pleasure. I finished answering the question by saying that to me beauty is everything that I see. The source of my values is my personal life. The values that I have, makes them so important because that is what defines me. It is what guides me on making my personal decisions. Dutton speaks his values through this interest in defining beauty within the Darwinian theory. 

Dutton and I go in the same path of defining beauty, although Dutton leans more into the science perspective using the Darwinian theory and were as myself sees beauty, out of the science/society perspective. In seeing this video, and giving to much information about the evolved definition of the beauty concept made me see that all of this comes from the perspectives from science and natural selection, as I understood from the talk that Dutton gave. We should care about this because it is something that we still evolved in defining and carry out into society. 

Beauty

I found the section of the Ted Talk discussing how natural selection made mates and children beautiful so we would not eat them extremely interesting. As a BSE major, I find this conflicting.

The biology side of me thinks this makes sense at first glance, that in order for our species to survive we need to mate and reproduce, so making mates and children aesthetically pleasing would keep our species alive. However, most humans do not have the biological desire to kill people they find unattractive, so I am not sure where I stand on this.

The society part of me thinks this argument is merely extrapolated biological theory when the only thing influencing our desires for mates and children are societal. Science does not work in a vacuum, and whether we like it or not, we are influenced by other people. Obviously our biological need to mate is in our genes, but as a species we have become too complicated to have our desires explained by the easy answer of "it's in our genes".

Now because I am in BSE, I can make connections between the two. For example, jealousy has often lead humans to killing each other. A social problem like infidelity in a relationship could end up with the cheated murdering the cheat-ee. But why? The hormones (biological) released from feeling betrayed (social) cloud a persons brain and lead them to do things they normally wouldn't. Then there is also the idea of rules and laws, and if you murder someone, you go to jail. If murder were legal there would be a lot more human death, and legality is a social construct, not genetics.

However, with domestication of animals it all falls on the "cuteness" of an animal. In our culture we slaughter cows and pigs and chickens every day, but we could never think of having a puppy slaughtering farm for dog meat. You could argue "cuteness" is a social construct, though, as other cultures would be okay with eating dogs and other domesticated animals.

So I guess my conclusion is that I do not fully agree with Dutton's statement, but there is definitely some merit to it.

The fear of inequality

In his reading, Pinker discusses four fears: the fear of inequality, the fear of imperfectability, the fear of determinism, and the fear of nihilism. I want to talk more about Pinker's stance on the fear of inequality, as the issue of inequality has been one at the forefront of many political issues in recent years, as well as countless times throughout history. Pinker believes all of these fears to be illogical and explains his stance on the fear of inequality as follows:

"Let me begin with the fear of inequality. The idea is that if we’re blank slates, we must be equal. That follows from the mathematical truism that zero equals zero equals zero. But if the mind has any innate organization, according to this fear, then different races, sexes, or individuals could be biologically different, and that would condone discrimination and oppression.

"I think it’s easy to see the non-sequitur here. It confuses the value of fairness with the claim of sameness. When the Declaration of Independence said, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' it surely did not mean 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are clones.' Rather, a commitment to political equality means two things. First, it rests on a theory of universal human nature, in particular, universal human interests, as when the Declaration continues by saying that 'people are endowed … with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' It’s also a commitment to prohibit public discrimination against individuals based on the average of certain groups they belong to, such as their race, ethnicity, or sex. And as long as we have that policy, it doesn’t matter what the average statistics of different groups turns out to be."

Pinker's argument is certainly interesting to think about. He claims that the issue of equality depends on "universal human interests," an idea that could theoretically work, but ignores the context of the world we currently live in. Human interests differ all across the world, and while the several universal ones that he mentions (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) truly are universal, they aren't attainable for many. Outside action is necessary for equality to be a realistic goal for a massive portion of the world's population. Thus, the fear of inequality is still a relevant qualm for many.

While inequality isn't something I've had to deal with much in my own life, as I am a straight, white male who grew up in an upper-middle-class family in the United States, this issue is one of significant value to me. Many of my friends are Somali immigrants or children of immigrants and the fear of inequality is one they can't avoid. While Pinker's argument may be grounded in a seemingly correct idea, no one in my friends' situations, anything similar, or anything worse would feel any better about how "illogical" the fear of inequality is.

Do we have free will and freedom?

Pinker’s argument, specifically, his beliefs in the influence that genes and biology play in shaping human nature and behavior were views that I could not fully get behind. A couple aspects of his argument contradict my deeply-held value that people’s, environments, support systems, families, social priorities, and education greatly affects human behavior, self-image, human interactions, and whether people made good vs bad decisions. We might not completely be blank slates due to our genetic makeup but I believe we are more than our genes affecting human nature. I really enjoyed reading Pinker’s argument. There was something about it that made me want to believe it even though there were multiple reasons that I don’t. When it comes down to it, I think that most of the examples that he gave tended to be generalizations and an argument that would be difficult to make universally to human kind.

One moment from Pinker’s “The Blank Slate” that really got me thinking about free will and the idea that our genes, in a way, predetermine our choices was the following passage:

“The ghost in the machine also has considerable appeal. People don’t like to think of themselves as heaps of glorified clockwork. Machines, we like to think, are insensate and have some workaday purpose, like grinding corn or sharpening pencils. Humans, in contrast, are sentient, and have some higher purpose, such as love, worship, and the pursuit of knowledge and beauty. Machines follow the ineluctable laws of physics, whereas behavior is freely chosen. With choice comes optimism about possibilities for the future, and with choice comes responsibility, the power to hold others accountable for their actions.”

This moment in the reading is meaningful for me because I think there is often a lot of debate about free will and fate and the amount of freedom people have and should have. I can’t say that I have heard the argument that our minds and bodies as biological products of our genes dictate our free will very often. This was probably why I found this moment very intriguing. As I have grown up and become more independent, I believe that the experience of having to make some pretty big decisions that could have led me in different directions allows me to see different ways in which decisions I have made have shaped my life. I think understanding ways in which past decisions could have changed your life if you had made them differently is a large factor in making choices freely. Pinker would argue that we don’t make choices freely as much as we would like to think that we do. Although he does give many examples to back up his argument in this article, I think he gives this argument in a way that doesn’t really acknowledge that people make decisions every day and they all in some aspect affect one’s life. This speaks to my beliefs of people’s environments affecting their decisions because I believe that there are many factors that go into decision making.

I think this issue shows the existence of ‘science wars’ because it debates the primary causes of human behavior and incorporates and interplays with varying levels of genetics, biological science, psychology, and social factors. I think the extent to which people have free will, think that they have free will, and even want to have free will is definitely influenced by someone’s environment. This is definitely something that we should care about because identifying factors (sometimes outside influences) that affect personal freedom and free will directly influences how people are able to live their lives and the rights that they have. For example, I think people under the control of oppressive governments view freedom differently than those who live in societies where they have more freedoms. I think how we view freedom and if we have it affect how we use it. I guess societal freedom and personal choice aren’t things Pinker analyzes in extreme depth but throughout his argument I kept thinking that these are big things that impact how people act and behave and is very much impacted by people’s social environment.

Darwinian Beauty

 According to Denis Dutton, evolution can play a big role in why we mutually find things to be beautiful. During he talk, he brought up hand axes the Homo erectus and Homo ergaster made. They're too intact to have been used and too big to be practical. People argue that this is the evidence that even our ancestors valued art and displayed it like we do today. Ok, so maybe they found these hand axes beautiful a long time ago. But we've had plenty of time to evolve in our thinking and knowledge. So why do we still find this beautiful?

Dutton argues it's because of evolution. When we look at that hammer, we don't just admire the material it is made out of. We also admire the person who did the work. We see their intelligence, fine motor skills, planning ability, and conscientiousness. And through Darwin's viewpoints of evolution, no wonder we find it beautiful.

This point reminds me of our viewpoints of why we find slimmer, athletic people desirable. To our human brains, they are viewed as being healthy and with longevity: traits needed when selecting mates. Based on evolution, we find beauty in traits that will help us and our future generations succeed. A slim person will potentially live longer and help reproduce; we see that as "beautiful." Just as we see the admirable qualities needed to make hand axes. This idea is something that I agree with. I've realized my own thoughts have been found to revolve around finding beauty associated with traits I admire.

I do think there are a few flaws in this idea. And it's preferences. I have friends who love country music; a genre I hate with a passion. There's the episode of The Office where they argued if Hilary Swank was hot. There are things we find mutually beautiful based on evolution. However, that can't always account for why I hate country music or why Hilary Swank is a big controversy.

There can be many arguments on why beauty is beauty. "Beauty is the eye of the beholder." You can sit down and ponder why everyone loves viewing the mountains, but I think Darwin has a good point. From peacock feathers to A Starry Night, there was some important feature or skill used that we find beautiful.