Hume and Locke proceeded from the same premise which the phenomenologists advanced, and which remains unrefuted philosophically or psychologically, that all knowledge of external reality is acquired through the senses, and that, insofar as these senses are unreliable, each human being is "impressionable"-like a blank slate. Let us take the notion of "The Blank Slate": neither Hume nor Locke ever denied the existence of human nature (indeed, Pinker quotes Hume's comments on the innate human appreciation for beauty to advance his own convictions about "a universal human aesthetic" cf. But Pinker's attempt at debunking this notion of "the blank slate" by conflating it unhelpfully with "the Noble Savage" and "The Ghost in the Machine" is decidedly problematic. Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate has many virtues: its critique of radical scientists is cogent, even shocking its differentiation between the reasonable theories of equity feminists and the unreasonable assumptions of gender feminists is helpful its deft and copious references to popular culture for apt illustrations of otherwise abstruse philosophical concepts, and its willingness to engage science in addressing ethical issues, is entirely laudable.Īs its title indicates, the purpose of Pinker's book is to counter the (to him) prevailing modern notion that humans have no intrinsic natures.
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