Steven Pinker Quotes About Culture

Quotes about: Culture

• In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine the truth, and that illness and misfortune are caused and alleviated by spirits, ghosts, saints ... and gods.

  Steven Pinker

  Believe, People, Soul

  Steven Pinker (2003). “How the Mind Works”, p.494, Penguin UK

• Morality, then, is not a set of arbitrary regulations dictated by a vengeful deity and written down in a book; nor is it the custom of a particular culture or tribe. It is a consequence of the interchangeability of perspectives and the opportunity the world provides for positive-sum games.

  Steven Pinker

  Book, Opportunity, Games

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.211, Penguin

• I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Intellectual, Culture

  "Steven Pinker: fighting talk from the prophet of peace". Interview with John Naughton, www.theguardian.com. 15 October 2011.

• Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely to breed dangerous subcultures of rootless young men.

  Steven Pinker

  Moving, Men, Empowering

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.16, Penguin

• The moral, then, is that familiar categories of behavior - marriage customs, food taboos, folk superstitions, and so on - certainly do vary across cultures and have to be learned, but the deeper mechanisms of mental computation that generate them may be universal and innate.

  Steven Pinker

  Culture, May, Superstitions

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.66, Penguin

• There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization.

  Steven Pinker

  Culture, Doe, Acquire

• Northeastern and most coastal states will vote for the candidate who is more closely aligned with international cooperation and engagement, secularism and science, gun control, individual freedom in culture and sexuality, and a greater role for the government in protecting the environment and ensuring economic equality.

  Steven Pinker

  Gun, Government, Culture

• Obviously no language is innate. Take any kid from any race, bring them up in any culture and they will learn the language equally quickly. So no particular language is in the genes. But what might be in the genes is the ability to acquire language.

  Steven Pinker

  Kids, Race, Culture

• There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture.

  Steven Pinker

  Intellectual, Guilt, Western Culture

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