[shrinkermd]

I am an old man without enough to do. Lately, I have taken an interest in "social class" as an important consideration in individual and group dynamics. In order to maintain some semblance of memory, I do these revierws both for myself and my children.

I was going to post several others, but I referred to Pinker's Chapter on politics. Previously, I poste Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare about the "underclass."

Unfortunately, none of the end-notes came through. I can only say I am sorry.

[Consort]

...it is amenable to a variety of reviews --both positive and negative.

Let me know when you find a similar book that has no negative reviews. Your post sounds like a plot for a FOX-TV sitcom. I don't like FOX-TV sitcoms.

Is Roger Brown related to Norman O. Brown who wrote Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History?

[Question_Assumptions]

Thomas Sowell, in A Conflict of Visions saw much of the ideological struggle as being between two visions of the nature of humanity--"the constrained vision" and "the unconstrained" vision. Pinker takes Sowell's "constrained" and calls it "tragic." He takes Sowell's "unconstrained" and calls it "utopian".

FYI, Sowell, himself, called this vision "tragic" in his earlier book, Vision of the Annointed. Both that book and The Quest for Cosmic Justice lead to the veiws he expresses in A Conflict of Visions. Heck, just read all of Sowell's books. Even if you don't agree with everything he says, they provide excellent food for thought.

[beckett]

I'm in the middle of the book right now. Pinker has modified some of his earlier stances, it appears, particularly where infanticide is concerned. In the past he has written in The New York Times that infanticide is justifiable under certain conditions, a somewhat Singeresque position, but in The Blank Slate, although he never outright states a personal position, infanticide is discussed in a clearly negative tone. He also tends to disparage Singer's "speciesism" folderol.

Pinker has a few good words to say about Rawls's "veil of ignorance," which a big disappointment, and he avoids speaking boldly on a number of hot button issues, but, overall, the book, like its predecessor How the Mind Works, is a worthwhile contribution to the cognitive sciences, the evolutionary sciences, and contemporary philosophy generally.

[Question_Assumptions]

Also, to be fair to Sowell's anecdotal evidence that IQ is not determined by race, he also sites as examples the test scores of pre-1960s black Harlem school children (who, he says, often ranked #2 in New York City on test scores) and the observation that performance on IQ tests relates to how seriously a person takes the test and how familiar they are with the kind of thinking (often abstract) required by the test. If people don't take thinking and test-taking seriously or are not familiar with the sort of abstract thinking required by an IQ test, it does seem likely that they will underperform any genetic potential on IQ tests. Indeed, Sowell's book Race and Culture talks about the importance of the value that a culture places on thinking and learning on IQ and success. It is not surprising, for example, that Jews do well on IQ tests because they have historically valued learning and abstract thinking. And bear in mind that "culture" is a good proxy for the idea of peers and that other 40% that isn't genetic, even according to this book. Indeed, my own personal experience with the contrast between Carribean blacks and American blacks suggests that culture plays a very large role, indeed, in expressed intelligence and success.

[KC Burke]

Nice thread.

[dennisw]

BUMP

[dennisw]

My instant take on him is his lifestyle reflects (has reflected) the utopian vision while now at least he's an advocate of the tragic vision. I'm in the tragic vision column but with a leavening of utopianism. Nature versus nature comes down to a 50/50 draw for me. We have the failed social experiments of communism, Islam and nazism in front of us. But I still believe that in "benevolent dictator" type institutes children can be positively molded. They would need to be away from their parents for part of the year.

[lodwick]

Thanks so much for the time and effort that you expended to put this post together. It's not very often that a sociology/psychology book worth its salt is written. Mumbo-jumbo is normally the order of the day.

God bless and keep. JL

[headsonpikes]

Thanks for your hard work.

It inspired a thoughtful and provocative thread.

I'll try to contribute later.

[Stultis]

Excellent. Thanks for sharing this.

[aculeus]

I too liked Pinker's book.

Thanks for posting.