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    Pinker V Augustine

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    DarvyCana
    Pinker argues against the "blank slate" view of human nature, which holds that the mind has no innate traits and is shaped entirely by experience. He claims this view is inconsistent with modern science and leads to fears about inequality, determinism, and moral relativism that are unfounded. Augustine believed that while humans have free will, original sin corrupted human nature such that people are inclined to sin without God's grace. For Augustine, the most important part of the human mind is the will, and good persons are those whose will and reason are subordinate to faith in God.

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    Pinker V Augustine

    Uploaded by

    DarvyCana
    70 views1 page
    Pinker argues against the "blank slate" view of human nature, which holds that the mind has no innate traits and is shaped entirely by experience. He claims this view is inconsistent with modern science and leads to fears about inequality, determinism, and moral relativism that are unfounded. Augustine believed that while humans have free will, original sin corrupted human nature such that people are inclined to sin without God's grace. For Augustine, the most important part of the human mind is the will, and good persons are those whose will and reason are subordinate to faith in God.

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    A summary of the philosophies of Pinker v Augustine.

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    Pinker v Augustine

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    Pinker argues against the "blank slate" view of human nature, which holds that the mind has no innate traits and is shaped entirely by experience. He claims this view is inconsistent with modern science and leads to fears about inequality, determinism, and moral relativism that are unfounded. Augustine believed that while humans have free will, original sin corrupted human nature such that people are inclined to sin without God's grace. For Augustine, the most important part of the human mind is the will, and good persons are those whose will and reason are subordinate to faith in God.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    70 views1 page

    Pinker V Augustine

    Uploaded by

    DarvyCana
    Pinker argues against the "blank slate" view of human nature, which holds that the mind has no innate traits and is shaped entirely by experience. He claims this view is inconsistent with modern science and leads to fears about inequality, determinism, and moral relativism that are unfounded. Augustine believed that while humans have free will, original sin corrupted human nature such that people are inclined to sin without God's grace. For Augustine, the most important part of the human mind is the will, and good persons are those whose will and reason are subordinate to faith in God.

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    H/W 8th October 2017

    Augustine v Pinker (Blank Slate or Pre-determined)


    Pinker argues that modern science has challenged three "linked dogmas" that constitute the
    dominant view of human nature in intellectual life:

    the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits) empiricism.


    the noble savage (people are born good and corrupted by society) romanticism.
    the ghost in the machine the soul.
    Most of his work is dedicated to examining fears of the social and political consequences of
    his view of human nature: fear of inequality, imperfectability, determinism and nihilism.
    Pinker, however, claims these fears are invalid, and that the blank slate view of human
    nature would actually be a greater threat if it were true. For example, he argues that
    political equality does not require everyone thinking the same, but rather instead to focus
    on policies that treat people as individuals with rights. Moral progress doesn't require the
    human mind to be naturally free of selfish motives, only that it has other motives to
    counteract them.
    Responsibility doesn't require behaviour to be without reason, only that it respond to praise
    and blame; and that meaning in life doesn't require that the process that shaped the brain
    must have a purpose, only that the brain itself must have purposes. He also argues that
    grounding moral values in claims about a blank slate opens them to the possibility of being
    overturned by future empirical discoveries. He further argues that a blank slate is in fact
    inconsistent with opposition to many social evils since a blank slate could be conditioned to
    enjoy degradation.
    Augustine's view was that God selects only a few people to receive grace and be saved. The
    rest of humanity will just continue to sin and not repent, and then they will be punished for
    it after death in hellfire. While Plato emphasized the importance of perfecting reason and
    following it, Augustine emphasized the importance of the will, the ability to choose between
    good and evil.
    The fundamental religious duty is to love and serve God; if we can succeed in this, we will
    also choose the good and avoid the evil. Human nature, as created by God, is good, and the
    free will that He originally gave us places us higher in the metaphysical ladder of beings than
    nonhuman animals or plants. It's true that Augustine believes that there are saintly humans.
    Such humans love the things that they ought to love. They use reason properly. But without
    the grace they get from God, and which they cannot earn, they would neither be good nor
    able to reason correctly.
    According to Augustine, ethically, the most important part of the mind is not the intellect (or
    reason) but the will. Although originally neither good nor bad, the human will became
    corrupted so that it is in most cases inclined to love lower rather than higher goods. Good
    persons are those whose will and reason are subordinated to faith in God and devotion to
    God's will (i.e., that we should live righteously).

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