Steven Pinker Quotes - Page 9

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• Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.

  Steven Pinker

  Art, Human Nature, Scholar

  "A biological understanding of human nature". Edge Interview, www.edge.org. September 18, 2017.

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• When a scientist considers all high-tech mental machinery needed to arrange words into ordinary sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential little decorations. The very fact that they have to be drilled shows that they are alien to the natural workings of the language system. One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.

  Steven Pinker

  Cat, Judging, Ordinary

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language”, p.409, Penguin UK

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• Astrology had an important role in the ancient world. You can't understand many things unless you know something about astrology - the plays of Shakespeare and so on.

  Steven Pinker

  Play, Astrology, Important

  "Proud atheists". Salon Interview, www.salon.com. October 15, 2007.

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• The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind.

  Steven Pinker

  Brain, Mind, Bags

  "Will Genetic Engineering Kill Us?" by Mark Baard, www.wired.com. April 16, 2003.

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• We can make fun of hockey fans, but someone who enjoys Homer is indulging the same kind of vicarious bloodlust.

  Steven Pinker

  Fun, Hockey, Bloodlust

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• I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about socialism and humanism and the other great ideas that have shaped political philosophies and therefore the course of human events.

  Steven Pinker

  Philosophy, Thinking, Ideas

  "Proud atheists". Interview with Steve Paulson, www.salon.com. October 15, 2007.

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• Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries.

  Steven Pinker

  Country, War, Today

  Steven Pinker (2011). “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”, p.281, Penguin

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• 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

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• The 9/11 strikes left an indelible impact on our minds, but in relative terms, the scale of casualties actually wasn't all that high.

  Steven Pinker

  Impact, Mind, Scales

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• A successful learner, . . . must be constrained to draw some conclusions from the input and not others.

  Steven Pinker

  Successful, Input, Conclusion

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.148, Penguin

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• Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.

  Steven Pinker

  Numbers, People, World

  "Proud atheists". Salon Interview, www.salon.com. October 15, 2007.

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• But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.

  Steven Pinker

  Possibility, Genes, Cases

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• Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology.

  Steven Pinker

  Commitment, Equal Treatment, Issues

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.451, Penguin

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• The problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed forces or vestiges of our animal past; it is that they were designed to propagate copies of the genes that built them rather than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral values.

  Steven Pinker

  Animal, Past, Untamed

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.370, W. W. Norton & Company

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• [Napoleon deployed] every available resource to inflict all-out defeats on [his] enemies.

  Steven Pinker

  Enemy, Defeat, Resources

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• Heritability pertains to the entirety of the genome, not to a single gene.

  Steven Pinker

  Genes, Entirety, Genome

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• ... people notice differences and expect every difference in form to convey some difference in meaning.

  Steven Pinker

  Differences, People, Form

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• Theories of art carry the seeds of their own destruction.

  Steven Pinker

  Art, Destruction, Theory

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.523, W. W. Norton & Company

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• 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.

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• I think a lot of moral debates are not over what is the basis of justice, but who gets a ticket to play in the game.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Games, Play

  "Steven Pinker: the mind reader". www.theguardian.com. November 5, 1999.

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• Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.

  Steven Pinker

  Mind, Today, Genetics

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• Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.

  Steven Pinker

  Self, Empathy, Violence

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• It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher.

  Steven Pinker

  Fighting, Men, Numbers

  "A History of Violence" by Steven Pinker, newrepublic.com. March 19, 2007.

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• Disgust is intuitive microbiology

  Steven Pinker

  Microbiology, Disgusting, Intuitive

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.383, W. W. Norton & Company

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• 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

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