Dr. Steven Pinker, a psychologist of language at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a book, ''The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature,'' he seeks to create greater political elbow room for those engaged in the study of the ways genes shape human behavior. ''If I am an advocate, it is for discoveries about human nature that have been ignored or suppressed in modern discussions of human affairs,'' he writes. A principal theme of Dr. Pinker's argument is that the blank slaters -- the critics of sociobiology and their many adherents in the social sciences -- have sought to base the political ideals of equal rights and equal opportunity on a false biological premise: that all human minds are equal because they are equally blank, equally free of innate, genetically shaped, abilities and behaviors. The politics and the science must be disentangled, Dr. Pinker argues. Equal rights and equal opportunities are moral principles, he says, not empirical hypotheses about human nature, and they do not require a biological justification, especially not a false one. There is evidence that some universal human social behaviors and faculties are innate, and presumably shaped in part by the genes. In ''The Blank Slate,'' Dr. Steven Pinker lists some behaviors of political consequence which he considers may fall in this category. Innate Social Behaviors *Primacy of family ties, making nepotism and inheritance appealing. *A propensity to share based on reciprocity where ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3X5AuKE9rg&hl=en
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