Edge.org published this interview with Steven Pinker.   I've been a minor fan of Pinker's over the years and have read both of his previous books -- The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works. 

Both books were fascinating and insightful although, admittedly I haven't *really* finished either.   ;-)   They suffered a bit from being "too comprehensive" and occasionally read more like a text book rather than casual airplane reading.   Enlightening, fun to read, but more than occassionally a bit labored.

In this interview, Pinker talks about his latest book, The Blank Slate.  John Brockman of Edge.org writes:

In The Blank Slate, he notes "that there is a quasi-religious theory of human nature that is prevalent among pundits and intellectuals, which includes both empirical assumptions about how the mind works and a set of values that people hang on those assumptions. The theory has three parts".

One is the doctrine of "the blank slate": that we have no inherent talents or temperaments, because the mind is shaped completely by the environment, parenting, culture, and society.

"The second is "the noble savage": that evil motives are not inherent to people but come from corrupting social institutions.

The third is "the ghost in the machine", that the most important part of us is somehow independent of our biology, so that our ability to have experiences and make choices can't be explained by our physiological makeup and evolutionary history.

These three ideas are increasingly being challenged by the sciences of the mind, brain, genes, and evolution," he says, "but they are held as much for their moral and political uplift as for any empirical rationale. People think that these doctrines are preferable on moral grounds and that the alternative is forbidden territory that we should avoid at all costs".

What seems most fascinating about Pinker's new book is that, whereas previous ones focused entirely on science, this book focuses on social/political implications of his research.  Within the Edge interview, he frequently cites James Madison -- a surefire way to win points with me  ;-)

For example:

... If people are innately saddled with certain sins and flaws, like selfishness, prejudice, sort-sightedness, and self-deception, then political reform would seem to be a waste of time. Why try to make the world a better place if people are rotten to the core and will just screw it up no matter what you do?

...As Madison argued, by instituting checks and balances in a political system, one person's ambition counteracts another's. It's not that we have bred or socialized a new human being who's free of ambition. We've just developed a system in which these ambitions are kept under control.

And, the other surefire way to win points, Pinker plans to piss off the Post Modernists:

EDGE: Who will be your critics?

PINKER: Certainly the postmodernists in the humanities...  They have always been enraged by the claim that limitations on human nature might constrain our social arrangements.

VERY good reading.   And I'm eagerly awaiting my next "little brown box" from Amazon.