Transcript How the Mind Works

How the Mind Works
How the Mind Works. (1997). Steven Pinker. W.W. Norton
Human Nature
• A denial of human nature, no less than an
emphasis on it, can be warped to serve
harmful ends.
– Both liberal (unfair leveling) and conservative
(utilitarianism, elitism)
• Some basic assumptions:
– Human nature implies innate human differences
that have noting to do with the structure of the
brain, which is the same for everyone.
– But the sexes are different and often think
differently, largely based on how they are brought
up – socialized.
• Thinking differently or being different does
not mean that we can discriminate against
people on the basis of their race, gender,
or ethnicity, which would be morally
wrong.
– Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance – fairness.
– Gloria Steinem: “There are really not many
jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina,
and all the other occupations should be open
to everyone.”
• The naturalistic fallacy – what happens in
nature is right.
– Dog-eat-dog, violence, war
• This fallacy does not consider a modulepacked mind that allows for innate
motives that lead to evil acts or for innate
motives that can avert them.
• Mental life is often a struggle between
desire and conscience.
• A richly structured mind allows for
complicated negotiations inside the head.
– One module (the rider) could subvert the ugly
designs of another (the elephant).
• Nature does not dictate what we should
accept or how we should live our lives.
• We determine our happiness and virtue.
• Can we blame bad behavior on our genes or
chemistry or family upbringing or society?
– Can a rapist say, “My genes made me do it?”
– Can a killer use the Twinkie Defense?
• Are we not the masters of our fate?
• In the scientific age we must explain behavior
as a complex interaction among:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
The genes
The anatomy of the brain
The biochemical state
Family upbringing
The way society has treated a person
The stimuli that impinge upon a person
• In 1993 scientists identified a gene
associated with uncontrollable violent
outbursts.
– “Someday a cure for hockey.”
• But without a clear moral philosophy, any
cause for behavior could be taken to
undermine free will and moral
responsibility.
• Two games: science and ethics
– The science game treats people as material
objects and its rules are the physical processes
that cause behavior through natural selection
and neurophysiology.
– The ethics game treats people as equivalent,
sentient, rational, free-willed agents, and its
rules are the calculus that assigns moral value
to behavior through the behavior’s inherent
nature or its consequences.
• Free will is an idealization of human
beings that makes the ethics game
playable.
• Ethical theory sees people as free,
sentient, rational agents whose behavior is
uncaused.
• As long as there is no outright coercion or
gross malfunction of reasoning, the world
is close enough to the idealization of free
will that moral theory can be applied to it.
• Science and and morality are two separate
spheres of reasoning.
• Only by recognizing them as separate can
we have them both.
• The mind is highly complex and is
designed to play both the science game
and the ethics game and apply the rules
appropriately.
• “Twilight Zone” story.
• So, is it right (ethical) to kill a robot?