Talk:The Blank Slate

Why is the summary of the book only one sentence long, while the feminist critique gets a whole paragraph?

Good point I think. This article as it stands is but evidence that Pinker may be right when he claims the questions addressed in his book are rarely discussed openly, without feminist bias. (Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to add more details about his book but perhaps someone else can...) -Abaris

The book has problems, you can read the reviews on amazon.com and the Skeptic magazine's critique and then add to this article based on what you read there. What one editor has already removed that I wrote here is that people with free will can choose not to do the things the statistics for their group suggest they are likely to do. The feminist's critique is gone now -- I personally know intellectual women and left it alone after it was added as it was an inoffensive personal appraisal of the position stated in the book, and also to see how the article would grow without further input from me (I started this article not so long ago.) You might consider looking at the history of the article to see how it "evolved"...  However, I don't think wikipedia should link to blogs either, I didn't want to be the one to remove a dissenting opinion. I enjoyed reading the book, mind you. Jok2000 02:13, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * No! You can't put a summary of Amazon or Skeptic Magazine's user comments into an encyclopedia!  That's essentially hearsay.  The integrity of the word encyclopedia demands more than that.


 * Further, the book itself makes it very clear that statistical correlations describing social groups are rough predictions, and that there are many exceptions to any model that can be drawn based on the stats.

I removed the feminist criticism because unattributed opinion is even worse than opinion from an unworthy source. If the opinion of that one feminist weblogger is to be included in this article, the reader should be made aware where it comes from. If someone wants to reinsert the feminist criticism with proper attribution to the specific source, I have no objections. I personally feel the article is better without it for now, but I have no strong opinion on whether blog entries should be cited in Wikipedia and won't bother reverting over it. -- Schaefer 02:23, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Confused by the word "conservative"
I'm confused by the word "conservative" in this sentence:

Reviews of the book have been mixed. Steven Johnson praised the book in a review in The Nation, arguing that Pinker's Darwinian theory of the mind is not intrinsically conservative.

Does this mean "not intrinsically politically conservative"? Considering the quote is from The Nation, I think this must be so. But The Blank Slate is not really a political theory at all. Of all the possible reviews one could cite, it seems to me strange to site a politically-based review. If one is going to have several sections of the article, one entitled "Political Consequences" or something, it would make sense. But in a stub like this it seems like one should provide a review based upon the scientific basis of Pinker's argument.

In response to Jok2000's comment: "What one editor has already removed that I wrote here is that people with free will can choose not to do the things the statistics for their group suggest they are likely to do" - I can see why it was removed. "People with free will" is a loaded term. And as for that people can behave different from the "statistics for their group", I'm not too sure what that means either. What is "my group" or anyone's group? Assuming a group is defined and agreed upon (sex is a pretty clear grouping), the comment doesn't reveal anything. Statistics, by definition, are summary numbers that are not meant to stand in for individual values in a distribution. And if this was a criticism of Pinker, Pinker acknowledges this clearly in the book.

SJS1971 23:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)


 * The book is politically conservative, at least in some ways. It's ostensibly scientific (only), but makes assertions about human nature and behavior that lend much weight to conservative political theory and policy.  It's impossible to divorce the content of the book from at least some of its political implications.  For example:  if decision-making in humans is a computational process of evaluating data, assessing what society will think and other consequences, then taking action, swift and sure punishment for wrong-doing is a necessary tool of society's to influence peoples' decisions.  There are many claims that pull leftward instead of right, but much of the book is filled with descriptions of the human mind interacting with society, and with policy implications.

Book reviews
The book reviews used in writing the "Reception" section with a few exceptions are taken from the selection of quotes on Stephen Pinker's web page. That is inappropriate. Many reviews of this book have appeared in the academic literature; there are also reviews by academics in the popular press. Here is a preliminary partial list of book reviews that I found, which indicates a mixed reception, from positive to scathing.


 * Schlinger (Behavior and Social Issues)
 * Ludvig (Behavior)
 * Schlinger (Skeptic)
 * Richards (NYT)
 * John Dupré (American Scientist)
 * Hocutt (Consciousness and Emotion)
 * Stenmark (Zygon)
 * Fernyhough (Scotsman on Sunday)
 * Weidman (Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences)
 * Rauschecker (Nature Medicine)
 * Pikotti (Metapsychology)

Mathsci (talk) 04:28, 28 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for those, although I don't see two out of six as being "many" or "with few exceptions". More baffled by your templating that the quotes were "previously collated by an advocacy or lobbying group" - any evidence for that?  A.B.C.Hawkes (talk) 06:40, 28 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Agree. Also added some critical views. A very large number of views could be added from both sides regarding a notable book but a sampling is enough.Miradre (talk) 12:45, 28 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Miradre copy-pasted more than two quotes form Pinker's page bt, where she could locate the original review, she substituted that. The advocacy or lobbying group refers to the web page of Stephen Pinker containing a list of accolades from which Miradre has copy-pasted the comments. Pinker's page was written to advertise and sell the book, with selective quotes. When a book review is five or more pages in length, it is inappropriate to summarise it be pickng out one sentence. Miradre's copy-pasted material did precisely that. Sourcing "reception" to a web page of Pinker was unhelpful and silly. Mathsci (talk) 05:13, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Miradre's attempts to summarise long review articles has been hopelessly inadequate as was the categorisation of critics. Mathsci (talk) 05:23, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I understand the reasoning but doubt that it makes sense to call Pinker's personal web page "an advocacy or lobbying group". By the way, probably best to comment on content, not on the contributor here.  A.B.C.Hawkes (talk) 06:23, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The page is advocacy for the book (it's like the back cover of the Penguin book, which is for publicity purposes). This is a minor problem with the "cherry picking" template. The cherry picking is the main problem. It is Miradre's edits that are hopelessly inadequate, in case there was any doubt. How can long review be summarised in one sentence or one cherry picked quote? Mathsci (talk) 07:28, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment I accessed the review by Hocutt which can be found here. I was unaware of this beforehand, but that review and Pinker's book discuss at some length the controversy over race and intelligence and sociobiology, in particular mentioning Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould. This material is far too close to the three month topic ban imposed under WP:ARBR&I on Miradre, who should not be either writing about the reception of this book or using the book elsewhere to write wikipedia articles. Miradre was warned specifically by arbitrators to steer well clear of the subject. Editing an article about a book which discusses the topic at length, in particular editing a section on reception, which would normally discuss that coverage in reviews, is a clear violation of the topic ban. Miradre has access to the book: most recently she has used material from the book to add a long paragraph to the article War. None of this is good. Mathsci (talk) 07:28, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * That is incorrect. The book certainly does not discuss "at length" that debate except some brief mentions as examples of controversies. Neither have I any edits taken up the topic. It is like arguing that I could not cite an encyclopedia in, say, an architecture article because the encyclopedia may somewhere else have an article on race.Miradre (talk) 07:58, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * No it's discussed on at least three pages (I have full access to the book at the moment). In the review by Hocutt there is some emphasis on this particular subject. Whether it's an example or not is irrelevant. This article is covered by the topic ban, because the book mentions that subject. If in doubt, now that you have been told, please stop editing this article or using the book for adding material to other articles. Your analogy is incorrect: it looks like evasive wikilawyering.  This is an article about the book, about its contents and about reviews of its contents. This book is evidently not comparable in any way to not an encyclopedia. Mathsci (talk) 08:07, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * That is incorrect, there is just some brief sentences and a paragraph where Pinker states that he thinks as a personal opinion that there are no genetic differences. Again, it is like arguing that I could not cite an encyclopedia in, say, an architecture article because the encyclopedia may somewhere else have an article on race.Miradre (talk) 08:15, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

There are five references to Jensen in the bibliography:

Lewontin, Kamin and Rose are discussed extensively. So is Gould. Writing about this book is clearly covered by your topic ban. Mathsci (talk) 08:39, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I can reproduce long passages of text about the topic if you like. Mathsci (talk) 08:40, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Jensen is mentioned very briefly only twice in connection with other controversies. His arguments is not described. The other authors you mention above are only mentioned briefly and usually in regards to other issues regarding evolutionary psychology (they have done research on a number of very different topics). Pinker dismisses, as his personal opinion, genetic differences in one paragraph. You will find much on the R and I in an encyclopedia or an introductory psychology textbook. I have not added any material regarding the issue to any Wikipedia article. It is like arguing that I could not cite an encyclopedia in, say, an architecture article because it may somewhere else have an article on race.Miradre (talk) 20:03, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Race is discussed in a significant portion of this book, in the precise context of race and intelligence and the history of the race and intelligence controversy. It was ill-advised to edit this article or to edit other articles to create links here, Mathsci (talk) 20:40, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

The theories have evolvability paradoxes.
Specific mechanisms theory predicts that at least three specific modules are necessary to get anything done at all: one for perceptual cognition, one for emotional motivation and one executive. None of them is of any use unless the other two are already there. This raises a severe evolvability paradox for psychological nativism/evolutionary psychology/computational theory of mind. There are also specific evolvability paradoxes, such as redundant phonemes (no reason why a vast range of innate phonetic potential should have evolved when far fewer phonemes are evidently enough for a complex language, as shown by Polynesian languages), the first moral evolvability paradox (that a single moral individual would not survive in a group where everyone else was amoral) and first individual evolvability paradoxes in regards to many sexual behaviors (especially species recognition and sexual characteristic recognition). Then there is evidence, especially from domestication research, that evolution can go very fast. This means that nativist theory predicts that different human groups should have evolved big racial differences in psychology by natural selection working on individual hereditary psychiatry. That prediction is falsified by studies showing that supposed racial differences disappear when social factors are taken into account. These evolvability paradoxes are described in greater detail on the pages "Brain" and "Self-organization" on Pure science Wiki, a wiki for the scientific method unaffected by academic pursuit of prestige. 79.138.146.232 (talk) 16:39, 8 January 2013 (UTC)Martin J Sallberg
 * First off "Specific mechanisms theory" may be wrong, second there is no proof "None of them is of any use" alone or partially evolved, all that you state is supposition and not "science". First you must apply citations to your claims. Open statements like "Then there is evidence, especially from domestication research, that evolution can go very fast." though likely true is not citing actually data and much of the soft sciences are polluted with ambiguous/ open statements, without any proof of directly linked data. Now I'm going to state my opinion, and make it clear it is opinion unlike so many others in the 'soft sciences': There is much evidence for both physiological and environmental causes for our behavior and that our psyches are likely the products of complex interaction of both that varies even on the individual level and it's not likely a complete universally applicable theory of the mind will every be developed. Are we born with animalistic impulses? Most likely. Should we also try to override our impulses when they get in the way of altruism and utilitarian good? Yes, sounds great to me... but that just my opinion, and my opinion is open to change pragmatically when evidence requires it. Avoid Dogma, and avoid advertising for websites on the talk page -BerserkerBen (talk)


 * So-called "Evolvability paradoxes", as found in arguments for "Intelligent Design", are ignorant dreck that has been oft refuted by actual evolution science. Notably, evolution is not efficient, but rather unintelligent, blind and opportunistic, reusing existing structures for different functions, so whether "far fewer phonemes are evidently enough for a complex language" is completely irrelevant to the evolution of "a vast range of innate phonetic potential". Human speech evolved through a series of individually accidental mutational modifications of primate anatomy, not through some top down design process. Language came after (though in part in feedback with) the ability to speak, so the latter could not have anticipated the minimal needs of the former. And the signaling needs of Polynesians, who live in an unusually undemanding environment, are not indicative of the needs of other environments, where mimicry, stealth, and other forms of deception may pay off. And it's always a huge mistake (which the ID folks so often engage in) to look only at the end products of evolution, ignoring all the messy scaffolding, now since long gone, that played a role in their construction. Thus, "None of them is of any use unless the other two are already there" is, like all claims of "irreducible complexity", complete hogwash. -- 184.189.216.159 (talk) 00:01, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * "on Pure science Wiki" -- what I found there is "I no longer believe in what I wrote on this wiki"; sounds like progress. -- 184.189.216.159 (talk) 00:08, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Improving article quality
I've just revised the article quality to C-class per the WikiProject Psychology quality scale. Well done to everyone that's worked on this! To improve the article further, I suggest you start with WikiProject Books' preferred article structure. From reading the article, I think the current reception section already partially covers the suggested analysis section. The references on some of the reviews need to be improved to meet WP:RS - the main problem is that some cite the author's website (or similar), which doesn't meet the requirement for independent. Even though the website is referring to an independent review, we can't be certain that they haven't cut out important context, edited the statement, or even fabricated it, so it needs to directly reference the independent source. Ping me here or on my talk page if you have any questions, or you could ask for help on the WikiProject Books talk page or the WikiProject Psychology talk page(depending on whether your question relates to how to write about books or about how to write about psychology).--Xurizuri (talk) 23:54, 28 September 2021 (UTC)