Are you familiar with the nature versus nurture debate? Are we truly born as blank slates?
Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate challenges the popular notion of empiricism in human nature. He argues against the idea that our personalities and behaviors are solely shaped by our environment, presenting a critique of empiricism that’s both thought-provoking and controversial.
Read on to understand Pinker’s compelling arguments and the scientific evidence he uses to support his claims.
The Philosophy of Empiricism
The core of the prevailing view of human nature is empiricism. Pinker explains that, according to this doctrine, humans are a “blank slate” whose psychology and behavior are shaped only by their environment. He goes on to provide a critique of empiricism.
This view—famously trumpeted by 17th-century English philosopher John Locke—holds that any differences between two people are a byproduct of different environments, rather than any traits they’re born with. For example, you might think that some children are naturally agreeable and others are naturally disagreeable, but empiricism claims otherwise: Some children become disagreeable through their environments, while others become agreeable through different environments. For example, children raised by gentle, even-tempered parents might become friendly, while those raised by rude, emotionally volatile parents might become asocial.
(Shortform note: Although Pinker associates empiricism with Locke, it’s worth noting that Locke’s version of empiricism was concerned with knowledge specifically, not things like personality traits. In particular, Locke held that all of our knowledge comes from experience. For example, we might learn that 2 + 2 = 4 by seeing two pears and two apples and realizing that they amount to four pieces of fruit. However, this form of empiricism has no direct connection to personality traits.)
According to Pinker, the upshot of empiricism is that any undesirable social conditions—for example, high crime rates, poverty, and illegal substance use—stem from shortcomings in our environment. For instance, high crime rates are considered a byproduct of a flawed society or upbringing, and gender disparities in different careers are blamed on the ways that society treats men and women differently.
(Shortform note: The view that harmful social conditions have environmental causes is closely linked with the prison abolition movement, which seeks to end the practice of imprisoning those who commit crimes. According to prison abolitionists, crime is largely a byproduct of societal conditions—meaning that if we address those underlying conditions, prisons would become obsolete.)
The Alleged Benefit of Empiricism
Pinker contends that the mainstream view’s first benefit concerns social justice. According to its proponents, this view of human nature acts as a bulwark against discrimination and oppression because it makes discrimination unfounded.
According to Pinker, proponents’ reasoning behind this view is straightforward: Because empiricism is true, all humans are identical and only differ due to their environments. So, no discrimination is justifiable since we’re all essentially identical. For example, because members of all races are identical at their core, racial discrimination is irrational.
(Shortform note: Unlike empiricism, which grounds our natural rights in the claim that we’re essentially identical, many theological accounts base our natural rights—such as the right not to be discriminated against—on our alleged relationship to God. For example, mainstream Christian theology often claims that the imago dei, according to which humans are made in God’s image, provides grounds against discrimination and other forms of injustice.)
By contrast, if empiricism were false, social scientists worry that discrimination and oppression would be legitimized. For instance, if one racial group scored higher than another on an intelligence test, that would appear to be grounds for discrimination against the group with lower scores. These differences could provide grounds for tolerating oppressive practices because group differences in society could be blamed on inherent differences. For example, wealthy people might not sympathize with the poor, claiming they have inherently less work ethic or competence.
(Shortform note: Experts point out that, in recent history, oppressive societies often used pseudoscientific claims from “race science” to justify oppression. For example, Nazi Germany tried to rationalize its treatment of Jews by citing so-called “biological inferiorities” that meant the Aryan race was inherently superior. In other words, the Nazis (and other such oppressors) held non-empiricist views, since they rejected the idea that all humans are essentially identical.)
Pinker’s Critique of Empiricism
However, Pinker argues that this benefit is moot because discrimination is unjustifiable regardless of whether there are innate differences between people. He explains that discrimination would be unfounded because of the basic moral truth that it’s wrong to judge individuals on the basis of average traits of groups. For example, even if members of one gender committed crimes at a higher-than-average rate, it’d still be prejudiced to make negative judgments about individual members of that gender, since that would amount to condemning people for a trait that they can’t control—in this case, their gender.
(Shortform note: According to animal rights activists, Pinker’s basic moral truth—that innate differences between individuals don’t justify discrimination—should extend to animals as well. They argue that, just like it’d be unjust to discriminate against people deemed less intelligent, it’s unjust to discriminate against animals solely because of their perceived lower intelligence. To do otherwise, they claim, amounts to speciesism: the belief that other animal species are inferior to humans.)
The Scientific Argument Against Empiricism
According to Pinker, the mainstream view of human nature doesn’t just fail to deliver the benefits it promises—it also fails to reflect findings from contemporary science. He relates that behavioral genetics refutes the empiricist notion that our personality depends on our environment alone because it shows that our genes predispose us toward certain ways of thinking and acting. For example, Pinker points out that twin studies—ones that examine identical twins raised in separate households—reveal that identical twins are significantly more likely to share the same cognitive disorders (such as autism, depression, and anxiety) than adopted siblings raised in the same household. In other words, people who share the same genetic material are significantly more similar than those who share the same environment.
(Shortform note: While work in genetics supports the idea that core personality traits are heritable, and thus not dependent on environment alone, geneticists haven’t yet established the exact degree to which these traits are heritable. They estimate that 30 to 60% of the variance in personality traits is explained by our genes.)
