R8: Pinker & The Blank Slate

Quotes:

“Language surely does affect our thoughts, rather than just labeling them for the sake of labeling them.  Most obviously, language is the conduit through which people share their thoughts and intentions and thereby acquire the knowledge, customs, and values of those around them” (p. 209).

“I have not hidden my view that this entire line of thinking is a conceptual mess.  If we want to understand how politicians or advertisers manipulate us, the last thing we should do is blur distinctions among things in the world, our perception of those things when they are in front of our eyes, the mental images of those things that we construct from memory, and physical images such as photographs and drawings” (p. 214).

“But we can best protect ourselves against such manipulation by pinpointing the vulnerabilities of our faculties of categorization, language and imagery, not by denying their complexity” (p. 217).

Question:  “Postmodernists and other relativists attack truth and objectivity not so much because they are interested in philosophical problems of ontology and epistemology but because they feel it is the best way to pull the rug from under racists, sexists and homophobes” (p. 202).  I found this assertion pretty broad in spectrum and almost like formalism.  Does it strike you in the same way? 

Direct Connection: I am not very familiar with Pinker’s work but took away several points he was trying to emphasize in this chapter.  The topics of cognition, perception, categorization, language and imagery all play a prominent role in the chapter, as well as the notion of vague boundaries versus concrete boundaries.  As an English language instructor, my favorite part of the chapter is when Pinker wrote about language and its influence our on perception of the world.  I agree with the assertions that language can affect thoughts and it also helps humans transmit their thoughts to others.  Anyone that has learned a second (or third) language can probably relate to the frustration of wanting to express thoughts, ideas, etc. in the new language but being unable to due to the lack of vocabulary and mastery of the new language.  I also agree with the assertion that language is “not the same thing” as thought. (p. 209).  I see this as correlating Vygotsky’s emphasis on the importance of language acquisition as well as with Bruner’s emphasis on the importance of narrative.  Language is a tool we use to construct our realities, it does shape our thoughts but it is not thought in itself.  The emphasis on language is also a tie-in to the importance of making connections within society as referenced by the first quote above.

Indirect Connection: Reading Pinker’s thoughts on relativism made me think back to an Interdisciplinary Studies course I took at Appalachian State University titled “Science and Culture” in which we examined how the culture (and knowledge of the time) directly controls the scientific knowledge of the time.  An example which I distinctly remember is the cholera outbreak in England during the mid 19^th century and the belief that it was transmitted through the air.  A local man (John Snow) investigated the locations of the cholera deaths and determined that a local water pump was the likely cause of the outbreak in this particular neighborhood.  Snow’s use of interviews, maps and deduction literally changed the scientific thinking of the day by demonstrating that there was something more concrete than “bad air” which was causing the cholera outbreak.  This to me is a prime example of the usefulness of relativism in that it demonstrates how knowledge can only go as far as what is out there, what is known at the time.  In this light, couldn't all knowledge be relative, at least to a degree? It seems that what we know (or think we know) at the present moment could be completely changed by the “discovery” of new knowledge.

References:

Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1935/1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.