Madeline Brennan- Pinker Blog 1

On page five of the text, Pinker explores the four issues that are at stake when we refute the cultural doctrines of the blank slate, the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine. He explains that four fears arise when we abandon these theories of human nature and put more faith into the biological: inequality, imperfectability, determinism, and nihilism (5). While I disagree with much of Pinker's argument in favor of certain innate traits, I think the way he goes about his analysis is thoughtful, as exemplified in the section I mention above. Pinker makes a clear case for why his belief in certain individual characteristics being decided upon pre-birth does not play into racist, sexist, and other narrow-minded belief systems and patterns of justification. For this reason, I found Pinker's argument compelling despite its overall failure to align with my values.

I strongly believe that uncritical theories of biological determinism, which Pinker's beliefs feed into whether or not he would like to admit it, enable systems of oppression, such as capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. I believe Pinker is overall too optimistic about human nature (example: when he refers to the overall trend towards progress by "one part of human nature [becoming] mobilized against other parts" on p. 6). His analysis in the the paragraph to follow on page 6 is not necessarily incorrect, but, in my opinion, very incomplete. He fails to wholeheartedly bring in racism, classism, sexism, homo/trans-phobia, etc. Instead, he skirts around these weighty issues that need to be acknowledged and instead refers to "the circle expanding to embrace other villages, other clans within the tribe, other tribes, other nations, other races, and... all members of Homo sapiens" (6), which I perceive as both privileged and distanced language.

While it would make Pinker's argument additionally verbose and complex, he could have more whole-heartedly and directly discussed his ideas in conversation with hegemonic systems. For example, he dismisses the "fear of inequality" because fairness does not equal sameness and we should not want to be "clones," and then cites the Declaration of Independence in reference to the notion that "all people are endowed with certain inalienable rights." Pinker could have skipped the ideas of the Declaration of Independence (which I do not believe are recognized in the U.S.) and related the idea of the Blank Slate and the consequent fear of inequality that comes from dismissing it to political colorblindness, and how the notion of "I don't see difference" causes dangerous erasure of history and current realities. He could have brought in post structuralist Black feminist thought and talked about how we should neither essentialize specific identities nor pretend that differences don't exist, and rather celebrate difference and recognize the real impact that it has on our lives (a point which I believe Pinker's argument could successfully incorporate, but which he did not in his text.)

I believe that Trump defunding the EPA is not a direct result of the "science wars" but rather a result of pure ignorance and bigotry (which was probably fueled by the "science wars"). I still believe we should push all of our academic disciplines to fully recognize history and our contemporary realities (realities to me are the lived experiences of people and an acknowledgement of systematic oppression), regardless of the fear of what the "science wars" will result in. I believe attention to how the science wars might affect Trump and right-wing politics is a pragmatic, and probably necessary, centrist politics, but it does not align with my *core* values.