May we take another look at Chapter 16? The thought struck me, reading this part, that 95 percent of the people who review Pinker's works would hardly want to put politics "up-front." They would prefer to do what Pinker seems to have preferred to do: Bury it in Chapter 16.
And yet the present reviewer, apparently sensitive to the problem of inadequate basis for the fulminations at Chapter 16, gives Pinker a pass.
I hope to revisit this topic soon. But I need to recover from the holiday season first. :^)
Happy New Year, each and every one!
Pinker turns up in today's NY Times look at overrated and underrated ideas. To me, at any rate, he doesn't make a good showing. Overrated: the "slippery slope." Underrated: "amoral pragmatism". Pinker's argument against "slippery slope" rhetoric -- "When we lowered the voting age to 18, we didn't slip down a slope and give 5-year-olds the vote, too" -- doesn't seem convincing or much of an improvement over what he criticizes.
Every generation has some conflict between older moral codes and new, radical, more amoral ideas. This is where some of us walked in. In previous generations, Marxism was the "new" idea. Or pragmatism or logical positivism or psychoanalysis. Also at various times in recent decades, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Existentialism, Deconstruction, Marcuse, the Frankfurt School. Today Darwin, sociobiology, and genetic engineering are the "new" scientific shortcuts to understanding, human improvement, and liberation.
That may be true, but I can't help being skeptical, but I will try to read more of your article in my spare time. It certainly looks worth reading. I commend your efforts.