-- Anyone out there have any more articles by [or about] Pinker that outline his politics?
Pinker is a liberal Democrat who prayed at every PC altar in Blank Slate. He took on the far left, but that's easy since their ideas on biology are so laughable. But he bowed to John Rawls, and even mentioned the odious and false "veil of ignorance" as a good method for forming social and economic policy. On Affirmative Action Pinker towed the PC line completely.
Pinker is a rigorous research psychologist but a poor philosopher and an even worse social scientist.
It's not nature vs. nurture. It's a combination of both. And here's the simple argument. If a black (or white) man born of a gang-banged drugged out mother is adopted by a white suburban family, he will take on the characteristics, the dialect, the opinions of his parents. If anyone were to have been born, instead of into anesthetized suburbia, into a cruel molesting drunken household, he will be scarred for life. Intellectual and moral development would be retarded, not that suburbia hasn't its own moral and intellectual retardations. In either case whatever family or society they grow up in, neither will become another Shakespeare.
Thus it is nature and nurture. Of the two, I am of the opinion that nurture is far more influential on both moral and intellectual development. And moreover there is the x-factor, namely reason and choice by which we can overcome defeciencies, to varying extents, of both nature and nurture. And I think I have an empirical case to prove it in myself. After I took the SAT many years ago, I undertook an intense self-study of ancient Greek in the course of a couple of months (merely for the sake of learning Greek) and improved my SAT verbal by over 20%. Thus as we become our own men we may choose and with perseverance overcome the habits we have developed as kids, and also may come to understand the errors of our ways and opinions through reason. Thus Cicero became a novus homo, not through nurture, but in part because of his natural talent, much more because of his choice and his study. Demonsthenes is an even better example. He actually had a horrible speech impediment, which he overcame by filling his mouth full of rocks and practicing speeches with his mouth thus full. With practice, diligence and perseverence, and intense study, he became the most renowned orator in all the ancient world. Much more easily he might have given into the naysayers. There are I am sure many other cases and far better.
Thus its nature, nurture and reason/choice that determines who we become. Of the three nurture has by far the strongest influence, both good and bad. However, reason and choice is the most liberating, the most within our control, that divine gift by which we are more than mere brute beasts. But this is an old observation, which both Plato and Aristotle made millenia ago. Before embarking upon disproving the relatively obvious, these researchers would do well to look back to the proto-researches, much more thorough in some respects, when men were less distracted by microscopes and other nifty devices for observation and measurement, and developed their own faculties of reason and choice instead of the next newest observation machine and data collector. It might also sharpen their intellects a little and allow them to overcome whatever myoptic outlooks their nurture fostered.
Just my initial observations.