[Peace-discuss] Are you stupid, crazy or evil? Or all 3?

Sat Jan 13 20:56:42 UTC 2018

"Chomsky versus Pinker on Human Nature and Politics” 
James McGilvray

Introduction: Differences and justifications

The political writings of Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky differ in style,
audience, and content. Pinker is a stylist; he wrote a book (2014) advis-
ing others how to write. Chomsky’s fact- and irony-rich works demand the
reader’s critical participation; they do not try to persuade or charm. Pinker’s
work is welcomed by the establishment; Chomsky’s criticism is ignored or
rejected. Pinker’s writing expresses few qualms about the social hierarchies,
differences in power, capacity to dominate and acquire, and unequal rewards
of capitalist economic systems—systems that by their natures and in prac-
tice induce considerable disparities in income, power, and wealth. Chomsky
is an egalitarian who holds that everyone should have an equal say in eco-
nomic and political matters that affect them, even suggesting that an ideal
system would accord equal reward to all (1981).

Pinker declares Chomsky’s egalitarian views naïve. In The Blank State
(2004: 302), he says Chomsky’s socioeconomic ideal (anarchosyndicalism)
is a romantic notion ‘innocent of modern evolutionary theory with its
demonstration of ubiquitous conflicts of genetic interest’. By contrast, the
evolutionary psychology Pinker defends (2005) paints a Hobbesian ‘darker
view of human nature’. Its hallmarks of competition, distrust, and the pur-
suit of glory (Pinker, 2002) appear to justify the unequal socioeconomic
systems that Chomsky criticizes.

Evolutionary psychology can justify only if it offers an objective and uni-
versal science of human nature, and it can be universal and objective only
if it is a natural science. Chomsky holds that it is not: evolutionary psychol-
ogy does not qualify as a natural science. It is not that there are no natural
sciences of the mind, and in principle of human nature. Chomsky’s science
of language is a natural science (Chomsky and McGilvray, 2012: hereafter,
C&M). And Chomsky holds that a natural science of human nature might
be able to justify anarchosyndicalism (Chomsky, 1970, 1987), although in a
very indirect way. I explain how below. Apparently, what seem to be remote
academic disagreements over what counts as a natural science of mind are
relevant to the justification of economic and political institutions. So I begin
by sketching the differences in Pinker’s and Chomsky’s views of how to
construct natural sciences of mental systems.

Pinker and Chomsky on the sciences of mind

Pinker and Chomsky agree that what makes Homo sapiens distinct (what
constitutes our distinct nature) can be traced to our minds and what they
provide us in terms of cognitive capacities. They agree too that whatever
makes us unique must result from biological evolution. If science is to get a
grip on what makes us unique, it must do so by acknowledging that what
a biblical tradition calls ‘special creation’ is a product of biologically based
evolutionary change. In other crucial ways, however, they disagree.

Pinker and other evolutionary psychologists assume that what they call
‘natural selection’ operates over long time spans, typically involving mul-
tiple ‘selected’ mutations resulting in complex mind/brain systems that
solve practical (action-related) problems. Organisms (or their genes) sup-
posedly benefit from some mutations because ‘selected’ mutations enhance
the capacity to survive and produce progeny in specific environments. The
process of mutation and selection yields internal systems with complex
‘designs’: innate computational systems that allow the organism to deal
with the relevant problems. Current humans have many internal problem-
solving systems, some of which remain beneficial in the relevant sense, some
not—not because of change in social or natural environments.

To find these systems, the evolutionary psychologist focuses on the atti-
tudes, choices, capacities, preferences, and behaviours of contemporary
humans, seeking both those that benefit and those that are problematic.
They make guesses about which systems were ‘selected’ in some specified
environment(s) by guessing what would solve problems posed by that envi-
ronment, or (now) not. They typically (e.g. Cosmides and Tooby, 2005)
conceive of the mind/brain as a computer that ‘runs’ a cluster of more-or-
less devoted computational programs, each configured to solve a specific
kind of environmentally posed problem or problems. Like many other evolu-
tionary psychologists, Pinker (2005) adopts a version of what Fodor (1998a;
1998b) calls a ‘computational theory of mind’. To determine internal pro-
grams, they do backward engineering: they try to figure out what design a
system/program must have to solve problems well in a specified environ-
ment. This strategy is reflected in Pinker and Bloom’s (1990): for them,
the language system evolved through improvements in the capacity to
communicate linguistically…

<https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-32021-6_7>

> On Jan 13, 2018, at 1:00 PM, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> Yeah well Stevie Pinker Fully supported Harvard’s NeoConning President Larry Summers to the bitter end, even after Larry said that women are  dumber than men in math and science. Stevie is no progressive. Fab.
>  
> Francis A. Boyle
> Law Building
> 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
> Champaign IL 61820 USA
> 217-333-7954 (phone)
> 217-244-1478 (fax)
> (personal comments only)
>  
> From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss
> Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2018 12:49 PM
> To: peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Are you stupid, crazy or evil? Or all 3?
>  
>  
> Begin forwarded message:
>  
> From: "Szoke, Ron" <r-szoke at illinois.edu>
> Subject: Pinker
> Date: January 13, 2018
>  
>  
>  
> To bigots & fanatics,  the “real issue” is always the same:  Your personal moral character.  
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