In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The theory that religion is a force for peace, often heard among the religious right and its allies today, does not fit… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The fact that people can forget these simple truths when intellectualizing about children shows how far modern doctrines have taken us. They… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
When a scientist considers all high-tech mental machinery needed to arrange words into ordinary sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential little… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Cognitive psychology has shown that the mind best understands facts when they are woven into a conceptual fabric, such as a narrative,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The costs of an ignorance of science are nor just practical ones like misbegotten policies, forgone cures, and a unilateral disarmament in… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Consistent style prevents presentation from getting in the way of content. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
I've never argued that humans are massively hot-wired. What I was trying to point out was that you can't understand how we learn unless… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones. — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock.… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“The biblical story of the binding of Isaac shows that human sacrifice was far from unthinkable in the 1st millennium BCE. The Israelites boasted… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence,… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
In fact, without a specification of a creature's goals, the very idea of intelligence is meaningless. A toadstool could be given a genius award… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“The obvious cure for the tragic shortcomings of human intuition in a high-tech world is education. And this offers priorities for educational policy: to… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
