The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

by Steven Pinker

28. Perry, 1997.

  29. Harris, 1998a.

  30. From a dialogue with Betty Friedan in Saturday Review, June 14, 1975, p.18, quoted in Sommers, 1994, p.18.

  31. Quoted by Elizabeth Powers, Commentary, January 1, 1997.

  32. From a talk at the Cornell University Institute on Women and Work, quoted by C. Young, “The mommy wars,” Reason, July 2000.

  33. Liza Mundy, “The New Critics,” Lingua Franca, 3, September/October 1993, p.27.

  34. “From Carol Gilligan’s chair,” interview by Michael Norman, New York Times Magazine, November 7, 1997.

  35. Letter by Bruce Bodner, New York Times Magazine, November 30, 1997.

  36. C. Young, “Where the boys are,” Reason, February 2, 2001.

  37. Sommers, 2000.

  Chapter 10: The Fear of Determinism

  1. Kaplan, 1973, p.10.

  2. E. Felsenthal, “Man’s genes made him kill, his lawyers claim,” Wall Street Journal, November 15, 1994. The defense was unsuccessful: see “Mobley v. The State,” Supreme Court of Georgia, March 17, 1995, 265 Ga. 292, 455 S.E.2d 61.

  3. “Lawyers may use genetics study in rape defense,” National Post (Canada), January 22, 2000, p.A8.

  4. Jones, 2000; Jones, 1999.

  5. Dennett, 1984. See also Kane, 1998; Nozick, 1981, pp. 317–362; Ridley, 2000; Staddon, 1999.

  6. Dershowitz, 1994; J. Ellement, “Alleged con man’s defense: ‘Different’ mores,” Boston Globe, February 25, 1999; N. Hall, “Metis woman avoids jail term for killing her husband,” National Post (Canada), January 20, 1999.

  7. B. English, “David Lisak seeks out a dialogue with murderers,” Boston Globe, July 27, 2000.

  8. M. Williams, “Social work in the city: Rewards and risks,” New York Times, July 30, 2000.

  9. S. Morse, Review of C. Sandford’s Springsteen point blank, Boston Globe, November 19, 1999.

  10. M. Udovich, Review of M. Meade’s The unruly life of Woody Allen, New York Times, March 5, 2000.

  11. L. Franks, Interview with Hillary Clinton, Talk, August 1999.

  12. K.Q. Seelye, “Clintons try to quell debate over interview,” New York Times, August 5, 1999.

  13. Dennett, 1984; Kane, 1998; Nozick, 1981, pp. 317–362; Ridley, 2000; Staddon, 1999.

  14. Quoted in Kaplan, 1973, p.16.

  15. Daly & Wilson, 1988; Frank, 1988; Pinker, 1997; Schelling, 1960.

  16. Quoted in Kaplan, 1973, p.29.

  17. Daly & Wilson, 1988, p.256.

  18. Dershowitz, 1994; Faigman, 1999; Kaplan, 1973; Kirwin, 1997.

  19. Rice, 1997.

  Chapter 11: The Fear of Nihilism

  1. October 22, 1996; reprinted in the English edition of L’Osservatore Romano, October 30, 1996.

  2. Macnamara, 1999; Miller, 1999; New-some, 2001; Ruse, 2000.

  3. See Nagel, 1970; Singer, 1981.

  4. Cummins, 1996; Trivers, 1971; Wright, 1994.

  5. Zahn-Wexler et al., 1992.

  6. Brown, 1991.

  7. Hare, 1993; Lykken, 1995; Mealey, 1995; Rice, 1997.

  8. Rachels, 1990.

  9. Murphy, 1999.

  10. Damewood, 2001.

  11. Ron Rosenbaum, “Staring into the heart of darkness,” New York Times Magazine, June 4, 1995; Daly & Wilson, 1988, p.79.

  12. Antonaccio & Schweiker, 1996; Brink, 1989; Murdoch, 1993; Nozick, 1981; Sayre-McCord, 1988.

  13. Singer, 1981.

  PART IV: KNOW THYSELF

  1. Alexander, 1987, p.40.

  Chapter 12: In Touch with Reality

  1. Quotation from Cartmill, 1998.

  2. Shepard, 1990.

  3. www-bcs.mit.edu/persci/high/gallery/checkershadow illusion.html.

  4. www-bcs.mit.edu/persci/high/gallery/checkershadow illusion.html.

  5. From the computer scientist Oliver Selfridge; reproduced in Neisser, 1967.

  6. Brown, 1991.

  7. Brown, 1985; Lee, Jussim, & McCauley, 1995.

  8. “Phony science wars” (Review of Ian Hacking’s The social construction of what?), Atlantic Monthly, November 1999.

  9. Hacking, 1999.

  10. Searle, 1995.

  11. Anderson, 1990; Pinker, 1997, chaps. 2, 5; Pinker, 1999, chap. 10; Pinker & Prince, 1996.

  12. Armstrong, Gleitman, & Gleitman, 1983; Erikson & Kruschke, 1998; Marcus, 2001a; Pinker, 1997, chaps. 2, 5; Pinker, 1999, chap. 10; Sloman, 1996.

  13. Ahn et al., 2001.

  14. Lee, Jussim, & McCauley, 1995.

  15. McCauley, 1995; Swim, 1994.

  16. Jussim, McCauley, & Lee, 1995; McCauley, 1995.

  17. Jussim & Eccles, 1995.

  18. Brown, 1985; Jussim, McCauley, & Lee, 1995; McCauley, 1995.

  19. Gilbert & Hixon, 1991; Pratto & Bargh, 1991.

  20. Brown, 1985, p.595.

  21. Jussim & Eccles, 1995; Smith, Jussim, & Eccles, 1999.

  22. Flynn, 1999; Loury, 2002; Valian, 1998.

  23. Galileo, 1632/1967, p.105.

  24. Whorf, 1956.

  25. Geertz, 1973, p.45.

  26. Quotations from Lehman, 1992.

  27. Barthes, 1972, p.135.

  28. Pinker, 1994, chap. 3.

  29. Pinker, 1984a.

  30. Lakoff & Johnson, 1980.

  31. Jackendoff, 1996.

  32. Baddeley, 1986.

  33. Dehaene et al., 1999.

  34. Pinker, 1994, chap. 3; Siegal, Varley, & Want, 2001; Weiskrantz, 1988.

  35. Gallistel, 1992; Gopnik, Meltzoff, & Kuhl, 1999; Hauser, 2000.

  36. Anderson, 1983.

  37. Pinker, 1994.

  38. “‘Minority’ a bad word in San Diego,” Boston Globe, April 4, 2001; S. Schweitzer, “Council mulls another word for ‘minority, ‘“Boston Globe, August 9, 2001.

  39. Brooker, 1999, pp. 115–116.

  40. Leslie, 1995.

  41. Abbott, 2001; Leslie, 1995.

  42. Frith, 1992.

  43. Kosslyn, 1980; Kosslyn, 1994; Pinker, 1984b; Pinker, 1997, chap. 4.

  44. Kosslyn, 1980; Pinker, 1997, chap. 5.

  45. Chase & Simon, 1973.

  46. Dennett, 1991, pp. 56–57.

  47. A. Gopnik, “Black studies,” New Yorker, December 5, 1994, pp. 138–139.

  Chapter 13: Out of Our Depths

  1. Caramazza & Shelton, 1998; Gallistel, 2000; Gardner, 1983; Hirschfeld & Gelman, 1994; Keil, 1989; Pinker, 1997, chap. 5; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992.

  2. Spelke, 1995.

  3. Atran, 1995; Atran, 1998; Gelman, Coley, & Gottfried, 1994; Keil, 1995.

  4. Bloom, 1996; Keil, 1989.

  5. Gallistel, 1990; Kosslyn, 1994.

  6. Butterworth, 1999; Dehaene, 1997; Devlin, 2000; Geary, 1994; Lakoff & Nunez, 2000.

  7. Cosmides & Tooby, 1996; Gigerenzer, 1997; Kahneman & Tversky, 1982.

  8. Braine, 1994; Jackendoff, 1990; Macnamara & Reyes, 1994; Pinker, 1989.

  9. Pinker, 1994; Pinker, 1999.

  10. Quoted in Ravitch, 2000, p.388.

  11. McGuinness, 1997.

  12. Geary, 1994; Geary, 1995.

  13. Carey, 1986; Carey & Spelke, 1994; Gardner, 1983; Gardner, 1999; Geary, 1994; Geary, 1995; Geary, in press.

  14. Carey, 1986; McCloskey, 1983.

  15. Gardner, 1999.

  16. McGuinness, 1997.

  17. Dehaene et al., 1999.

  18. Bloom, 1994.

  19. Pinker, 1990.

  20. Carey & Spelke, 1994.

  21. Geary, 1995; Geary, in press; Harris, 1998a.

  22. Green, 2001, chap. 2.

  23. S. G. Stolberg, “Reconsidering embryo research,” New York Times, July 1, 2001.

  24. Brock, 1993, p.372, n. 14 p.385; Glover, 1977; Tooley, 1972; Warren, 1984.

  25. Green, 2001.

  26. R. Bailey, “Dr. Strangelunch, or: Why we should learn to stop worrying and love genetically modified food,” Reason, January 2001.

  27. “EC-sponsored research on safety of genetically modified organisms—A review of results.” Report EU
R 19884, October 2001, European Union Office for Publications.

  28. Ames, Profet, & Gold, 1990.

  29. Ames, Profet, & Gold, 1990.

  30. E. Schlosser, “Why McDonald’s fries tas:_ so good,” Atlantic Monthly, January 2001.

  31. Ahn et al., 2001; Frazer, 1890/1996; Rozin, 1996; Rozin, Markwith, & Stoess, 1997; p. Stevens, 2001 (but see also M. Stevens, 2001).

  32. Rozin & Fallon, 1987.

  33. Ahn et al, 2001.

  34. Rozin, 1996; Rozin & Fallon, 1987; Rozin, Markwith, & Stoess, 1997.

  35. Rozin, 1996.

  36. Mayr, 1982.

  37. Ames, Profet, & Gold, 1990; Lewis, 1990; G. Gray & D. Ropeik, “What, me worry?” Boston Globe, November 11, 2001, p.E8.

  38. Marks & Nesse, 1994; Seligman, 1971.

  39. Slovic, Fischof, & Lichtenstein, 1982.

  40. Sharpe, 1994.

  41. Cosmides & Tooby, 1996; Gigerenzer, 1991; Gigerenzer, 1997; Pinker, 1997, chap. 5.

  42. Hoffrage et al., 2000; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973.

  43. Slovic, Fischof, & Lichtenstein, 1982.

  44. Tooby & DeVore, 1987.

  45. Fiske, 1992.

  46. Cosmides & Tooby, 1992.

  47. Sowell, 1980.

  48. Sowell, 1980; Sowell, 1996.

  49. Sowell, 1994; Sowell, 1996.

  50. R. Radford (writing in 1945), quoted in Sowell, 1994, p.57.

  51. From “The figure of the youth as virile poet”; Stevens, 1965.

  52. Jackendoff, 1987; Pinker, 1997; Pinker, 1999.

  53. Bailey, 2000.

  54. Sen, 1984.

  55. Simon, 1996.

  56. Bailey, 2000; Romer, 1991; Romer & Nelson, 1996; P. Romer, “Ideas and things,” Economist, September 11, 1993.

  57. Romer & Nelson, 1996.

  58. Quoted in M. Kumar, “Quantum reality,” Prometheus, 2, pp. 20–21, 1999.

  59. Quoted in M. Kumar, “Quantum reality,” Prometheus, 2, pp. 20–21, 1999.

  60. Quoted in Dawkins, 1998, p.50.

  61. McGinn, 1993; McGinn, 1999; Pinker, 1997, chap. 8.

  Chapter 14: The Many Roots of Our Suffering

  1. Trivers, 1976.

  2. Trivers, 1971; Trivers, 1972; Trivers, 1974; Trivers, 1976; Trivers, 1985.

  3. Alexander, 1987; Cronin, 1992; Dawkins, 1976/1989; Ridley, 1997; Wright, 1994.

  4. Hamilton, 1964; Trivers, 1971; Trivers, 1972; Trivers, 1974; Williams, 1966.

  5. “Renewing American Civilization,” a talk presented at Reinhardt College, January 7, 1995.

  6. Chagnon, 1988; Daly, Salmon, & Wilson, 1997; Fox, 1984; Mount, 1992; Shoumatoff, 1985.

  7. Chagnon, 1992; Daly, Salmon, & Wilson, 1997; Daly & Wilson, 1988; Gaulin & McBurney, 2001, pp. 321–329.

  8. Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama, 1994; Petrinovich, O’Neill, & Jorgensen, 1993.

  9. Petrinovich, O’Neill, & Jorgensen, 1993; Singer, 1981.

  10. Masters, 1989, pp. 207–208.

  11. Quoted in J. Muravchick, “Socialism’s last stand,” Commentary, March 2002, pp. 47–53, quotation from p.51.

  12. Broadcast on Radio Free LA, January 1997, www.radiofreela.com. Transcript available at www.zmag.org/chomsky/rage or as a cached page on www.google.com.

  13. Daly, Salmon, & Wilson, 1997; Mount, 1992.

  14. Johnson, Ratwik, & Sawyer, 1987; Salmon, 1998.

  15. Fiske, 1992.

  16. Fiske, 1992, p.698.

  17. Trivers, 1974; Trivers, 1985.

  18. Agrawal, Brodie, & Brown, 2001; Godfray, 1995; Trivers, 1985.

  19. Haig, 1993.

  20. Daly & Wilson, 1988; Hrdy, 1999.

  21. Hrdy, 1999.

  22. Trivers, 1976; Trivers, 1981.

  23. Trivers, 1985.

  24. Harris, 1998a; Plomin & Daniels, 1987; Rowe, 1994; Sulloway, 1996; Turkheimer, 2000.

  25. Trivers, 1985, p.159.

  26. Used as the epigraph to Judith Rich Harris’s The nurture assumption.

  27. Dunn & Plomin, 1990.

  28. Hrdy, 1999.

  29. Daly & Wilson, 1988; Wilson, 1993.

  30. Wilson, 1993.

  31. Trivers, 1972; Trivers, 1985.

  32. Blum, 1997; Buss, 1994; Geary, 1998; Ridley, 1993; Symons, 1979.

  33. Buss, 1994; Kenrick et al., 1993; Salmon & Symons, 2001; Symons, 1979.

  34. Buss, 2000.

  35. Alexander, 1987.

  36. Brown, 1991; Symons, 1979.

  37. K. Kelleher, “When students ‘hook up, ‘ someone inevitably gets let down,” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 2001.

  38. Symons, 1979.

  39. Daly, Salmon, & Wilson, 1997.

  40. Wilson & Daly, 1992.

  41. Ridley, 1997. See also Lewontin, 1990.

  42. Rose & Rose, 2000.

  43. Fiske, 1992.

  44. Axelrod, 1984; Dawkins, 1976/1989; Ridley, 1997; Trivers, 1971.

  45. Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; Frank, Gilovich, & Regan, 1993; Gigerenzer & Hug, 1992; Kanwisher & Moscovitch, 2000; Mealey, Daood, & Krage, 1996.

  46. Yinon & Dovrat, 1987.

  47. Gaulin & McBurney, 2001, pp. 329–338; Haidt, in press; Trivers, 1971, pp. 49–54.

  48. Fehr & Gächter, 2000; Gintis, 2000; Price, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2002.

  49. Ridley, 1997, p.84.

  50. Fehr & Gächter, 2000; Gaulin & McBurney, 2001, pp. 333–335.

  51. Fehr & Gächter, 2000; Ridley, 1997.

  52. Williams, Harkins, & Latané, 1981.

  53. Klaw, 1993; McCord, 1989; Muravchik, 2002; Spann, 1989.

  54. J. Muravchik, “Socialism’s last stand,” Commentary, March 2002, pp. 47–53, quotation from p.53.

  55. Fiske, 1992.

  56. Cashdan, 1989; Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Fiske, 1992; Hawkes, O’Connell, & Rogers, 1997; Kaplan, Hill, & Hurtado, 1990; Ridley, 1997.

  57. Ridley, 1997, p.111.

  58. Junger, 1997, p.76.

  59. Cited in Williams, 1966, p.116.

  60. Williams, 1966.

  61. Fehr, Fischbacher, & Gächter, in press; Gintis, 2000.

  62. Nunney, 1998; Reeve, 2000; Trivers, 1998; Wilson & Sober, 1994.

  63. Williams, 1988, pp. 391–392.

  64. Frank, 1988; Hirshleifer, 1987; Trivers, 1971.

  65. Hare, 1993; Lykken, 1995; Mealey, 1995.

  66. On the heritability of antisocial traits, see Bock & Goode, 1996; Deater-Deckard & Plomin, 1999; Krueger, Hicks, & McGue, 2001; Lykken, 1995; Mealey, 1995; Rushton et al, 1986. Regarding altruism, one study failed to find that it is heritable (Krueger, Hicks, & McGue, 2001); another study, with twice as many subjects, found it to be substantially heritable (Rushton et al, 1986).

  67. Miller, 2000b.

  68. Tooby & Cosmides, 1990.

  69. Axelrod, 1984; Dawkins, 1976/1989; Nowak, May, & Sigmund, 1995; Ridley, 1997.

  70. Dugatkin, 1992; Harpending & Sobus, 1987; Mealey, 1995; Rice, 1997.

  71. Rice, 1997.

  72. Lalumière, Harris, & Rice, 2001.

  73. M. Kakutani, “The strange case of the writer and the criminal,” New York Times Book Review, September 20, 1981.

  74. S. McGraw, “Some used their second chance at life; others squandered it,” The Record (Bergen County, N.J.), October 12, 1998.

  75. Rice, 1997.

  76. Trivers, 1976.

  77. Goleman, 1985; Greenwald, 1988; Krebs & Denton, 1997; Lockard & Paulhaus, 1988; Rue, 1994; Taylor, 1989; Trivers, 1985; Wright, 1994.

  78. Nesse & Lloyd, 1992.

  79. Gazzaniga, 1998.

  80. Damasio, 1994, p.68.

  81. Babcock & Loewenstein, 1997; Rue, 1994; Taylor, 1989.

  82. Aronson, 1980; Festinger, 1957; Greenwald, 1988.

  83. Haidt, 2001.

  84. Dutton, 2001, p.209; Fox, 1989; Hogan, 1997; Polti, 1921/1977; Storey, 1996, pp. 110, 142.

  85. Steiner, 1984, p.1.

  86. Steiner, 1984, p.231.

  87. Steiner, 1984, pp. 300–301.

  88
. Symons, 1979, p.271.

  89. D. Symons, personal communication, July 30, 2001.

  Chapter 15: The Sanctimonious Animal

  1. Alexander, 1987; Haidt, in press; Krebs, 1998; Trivers, 1971; Wilson, 1993; Wright, 1994.

  2. Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993.

  3. Haidt, 2001.

  4. Haidt, in press.

  5. Shweder et al., 1997.

  6. Haidt, in press; Rozin, 1997; Rozin, Markwith, & Stoess, 1997.

  7. Glendon, 2001; Sen, 2000.

  8. Cronk, 1999; Sommers, 1998; Wilson, 1993; C. Sommers, 1998, “Why Johnny can’t tell right from wrong,” American Outlook, Summer 98, pp. 45–47.

  9. D. Symons, personal communication, July 26, 2001.

  10. Etcoff, 1999.

  11. Glover, 1999.

  12. L. Kass, “The wisdom of repugnance,” New Republic, June 2, 1997.

  13. Rozin, 1997; Rozin, Markwith, & Stoess, 1997.

  14. Tetlock, 1999; Tetlock et al., 2000.

  15. Tetlock, 1999.

  16. Tetlock et al, 2000.

  17. Hume, 1739/2000.

  18. I. Buruma, Review of Ian Kershaw’s Hitler 1936–45: Nemesis, New York Times Book Review, December 10, 2000, p.13.

  PART V: HOT BUTTONS

  1. Haidt & Hersh, 2001; Tetlock, 1999; Tetlock et al., 2000.

  2. Haidt & Hersh, 2001; Tetlock, 1999; Tetlock et al., 2000.

  Chapter 16: Politics

  1. From Iolanthe.

  2. Personal communication, D. Lykken, April 11, 2001. Other estimates of the heritability of conservative attitudes are typically in the range of .4 to .5: Bouchard et al., 1990; Eaves, Eysenck, & Martin, 1989; Holden, 1987; Martin et al., 1986; Plomin et al., 1997, p.206; Scarr & Weinberg, 1981.

  3. Tesser, 1993.

  4. Wilson, 1994, pp. 338–339.

  5. Masters, 1982; Masters, 1989.

  6. Dawkins, 1976/1989; Williams, 1966.

  7. Boyd & Silk, 1996; Ridley, 1997; Trivers, 1985.

  8. Sowell, 1987.

  9. Sowell, 1995b.

  10. From the preface to On the rocks: A political fantasy in two acts.

  11. Smith, 1759/1976, pp. 233–234.

  12. Burke, 1790/1967, p.93.

  13. Quoted in E. M. Kennedy, “Tribute to Senator Robert F. Kennedy,” June 8, 1968, www.jfklibrary.org/e060868.htm.

  14. Hayek, 1976, pp. 64, 33.

  15. Quoted in Sowell, 1995, pp. 227, 112.

  16. “If the law supposes that… the law is a ass—a idiot” (from Oliver Twist).