Maybe philosophical problems are hard not because they are divine or irreducible or meaningless or workaday science, but because the mind of Homo sapiens lacks the cognitive equipment to solve them. We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness ot to answer any question we are capable of asking.
Steven PinkerI think a lot of moral debates are not over what is the basis of justice, but who gets a ticket to play in the game.
Steven PinkerConventions are unstated agreements within a community to abide by a single way of doing things - not because there is any inherent advantage to the choice, but because there is an advantage to everyone making the same choice.
Steven PinkerCognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics.
Steven PinkerThe theory that religion is a force for peace, often heard among the religious right and its allies today, does not fit the facts of history.
Steven PinkerThe problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed forces or vestiges of our animal past; it is that they were designed to propagate copies of the genes that built them rather than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral values.
Steven PinkerThe last 100 years of research into the human brain...sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like the other organs in the body...our emotions and higher callings, such as religion, as well as our grubby low-level physical systems like stereo vision and motor control, are products of a machine.
Steven Pinker