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Is Debate Between Believers And Non-Believers Inevitably Futile? Disambiguating Faith: How A Lack Of Belief In God May Differ From Various Kinds Of Beliefs That Gods Do Not Exist Distinguishing The Atheist Agnostic, The Theist Gnostic, The Atheist Gnostic, and The Theist Agnostic Disambiguating Faith: Trustworthiness, Loyalty, And Honesty Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Loyally Trusting Those Insufficiently Proven To Be Trustworthy Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Tradition Disambiguating Faith: Blind Faith: How Faith Traditions Turn Trust Without Warrant Into A Test Of Loyalty Disambiguating Faith: The Threatening Abomination Of The Faithless Rational Beliefs, Rational Actions, And When It Is Rational To Act On What You Don’t Think Is True Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Guessing Disambiguating Faith: Are True Gut Feelings And Epiphanies Beliefs Justified By Faith? Disambiguating Faith: Faith Is Neither Brainstorming, Hypothesizing, Nor Simply Reasoning Counter-Intuitively Disambiguating Faith: Faith In The Sub-, Pre-, Or Un-conscious Disambiguating Faith: Can Rationality Overcome It? Disambiguating Faith: Faith As A Form Of Rationalization Unique To Religion Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Deliberate Commitment To Rationalization Disambiguating Faith: Heart Over Reason Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Corruption Of Children’s Intellectual Judgment Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Subjectivity Which Claims Objectivity Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Admirable Infinite Commitment For Finite Reasons Maximal Self-Realization In Self-Obliteration: The Existential Paradox of Heroic Self-Sacrifice Disambiguating Faith: Faith Is Preconditioned By Doubt, But Precludes Serious Doubting Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Tradition’s Advocate And Enforcer, Opposed To Merely Provisional Forms Of Trust Disambiguating Faith By Soul Searching With Clergy Guy Is Reason My “God” In Whom I Have “Faith?” Is Reason My "God" 2: On Authority, Uncertainty, and Inexplicability Is Reason My "God" 3: What It Means To Be A Rational Being Is Reason My God 4: On Reason As An Authority Is The Idea Of “Nothing” Illusory? On The Possible God Of Philosophy And Cosmology Vs. The Personal, Historical God Of Faith On Comparing God To The Tooth Fairy Towards A “Non-Moral” Standard Of Ethical Evaluation Further Towards A “Non-Moral” Standard Of Ethical Evaluation Some Suspicions About The Superiority Of Liberal Moral Values A Brief Overview Of My Dissertation Conceptual Problems For The Ideal of Unconditional Love How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways Call It Volitional Love Rather Than Unconditional Love What’s Wrong With Prejudice And Is It Prejudicial To Dislike Someone Over His Bad Thinking? Self-Righteous Atheist The Evolutionary Advantages And Present Disadvantages Of Our Conformist Minds Are Sex and Morality Merely “Evolutionary Tricks”? Evolution and Epistemology For God or Morality? On Those Who’d Hold Morality Hostage For Faith A Question For My Readers About “Moral Facts” Philosophical Ethics: On G.E. Moore’s Notion Of Good As An Indefinable Non-Natural Property Philosophical Ethics: Hobbes On The Source Of Authority Philosophical Ethics: Kant, The Good Will, And Rational Actions Philosophical Ethics: "But Why MUST I?" Kant’s Ironic Formulation Of Liberty As Duty Philosophical Ethics: A Possible Kantian Formula For Determining The Permissibility Of Self-Defense Philosophical Ethics: Rawls’s Maximin Principle Some More Thoughts On Rawls’s Maximin Principle And Fairness Philosophical Ethics: Whether It’s Worth It To Be Just With No Incentives Or With Disincentives Philosophical Ethics: From G.E. Moore’s Non-Naturalism To C.L. Stevenson’s Emotivism Philosophical Ethics: A.J. Ayer And The Emotivism Of A Positivist Philosophical Ethics: J.L. Mackie’s Error Theory And Jonathan Harrison’s Critique Thereof Philosophical Ethics: R.M. Hare On Moral Consistency As A Form Of Logical Consistency Philosophical Ethics: Can We Uphold A Moral Law And A Principle That We Should Break It? Philosophical Ethics: Bruce Russell On Theories About What Makes An Action Rational Or Not Philosophical Ethics: Does Calling Someone Evil Explain Anything About Them? On The Necessary Connection Between Reasoning And Accepting Rational Norms As Having Merit An Argument For Gay Marriage And Against Traditionalism Legalism Over Life: Nun Supports Life-Saving Abortion And Gets Excommunicated Moral Actions, Moral Sentiments, Moral Motives, and Moral Justifications: More On The Nun Excommunicated For Approving A Life-Saving Abortion Bishop of Church of England Doesn’t “Share Same Faith” As Those Who Accept Homosexuality A Follow Up Post On Gays And Christianity Ross Douthat Claims Arguments Against Gay Marriage Lose Because They’re Just "Too Abstract" Confronting Conservative Christians With The Consequences Of Their Homophobia Happy National Coming Out Day 2009! Gays and Christianity 3: If God Exists and Is Good, He Cannot Oppose Gay Love Equating All Gays To Rapists And Animals Commitment To Value Without God Is God Needed For Us To Care About Starving Kids A World Away? Religion As A Morally and Politically Ambivalent Force Jon Stewart Against Dogma and Extremism But Not “Religion” On Rejecting Atheism Because You Don’t Like Atheists Answering Accusations Against Atheists: The Charge That Atheists Have Faith Too Answering Accusations Against Atheists: The Charge We Naively Blame All War On Religion Against The Faitheists’ Belief In Belief “Moral Integration, or The Pros and Cons of Moral Absolutism and Moral Pluralism” Can You Have A Heart Without Having “The Heart of God”? Palin as Paradigmatic Fundamentalist and Why I Turned Against Faith Same Facts Different Views? The Complicated Relationship Of An Apostate To His Religious Friends And His Reilgious Past On The Meaning Of Meaning Character As Fate And Environment As Variability Sympathies For The Religious On The Alleged Intolerance Of The New Atheists Towards “Faitheists” In What Sense Religious Scientists Shouldn't Exist What’s Wrong With Religious Scientists? More Thoughts On Scientists In The Public Square When Should A Scientist’s Faith Disqualify Him From Scientific Institutional Authority? On Unjustifiably Leveraging One’s Credibility Will The Real Atheists Please Stop Kneeling The Value Of Religious Moderates And The Danger Of Isolating Religious And Political Fundamentalists Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellecuals 1 Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellectuals 2 Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellectuals 3 Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellectuals 4 On Teleology and Intellectual Virtues and Vices (5) How Faith Is Not Like Other (Revisable) Reflexive Assumptions (6) Against Faith and In Defense of Naturalism and Induction (7) If Faith Isn’t Publicly Justifiable, How Can It Provide Justification At All? You Are Not A Bible Character You Are Not A Biblical Character 2: Father Freeman’s Reply You Are Not A Bible Character 3: On Believing Without Proof How Genesis Is Not Only Literally False, But Metaphorically False True And False In Adam And Eve The Christian Logic Of Power, Pride, Humility, Free Will, Original Sin, And All-Consuming Divine Narcissism What Does It Matter If People Who Claim To "Know Jesus" Disagree About What Jesus Thinks—Can’t Some Still Be Right? “Just Leave Us Our Fictions” Absurdities And Atrocities Psychotic Reasoning, The Will To Believe, And Religious Interpretations Of The Mentally Ill A Little Evidence That Atheists and Theists Don’t "Simply Think Differently" Differently Abled Or Simply More Virtuous In One Respect When (And How) Should We Bother To Push The Issues? On Meeting People Where They Are Does Faith Make You An Idiot? In Defense Of Mocking And Embarrassing Religion My Thoughts On Blasphemy Day Anti-Theism or Pro-Atheism? Are Atheists An Oppressed Minority? Teachers Accused Of Bullying Atheist Colleague An Atheistic Invocation Atheism, Certainty, Mysticism, And Faitheism How Atheists Can Avoid Other Fundamentalisms: By Focusing On Rationalism First And Foremost Why Should Someone Else’s Faith Trump My Reason? Atheist Groupthink? On Freethinkers’ Groups Should Freethinkers Give Up On Replacing Religious Rituals With Their Own? On Fulfilling Religious Impulses Both Within And Without Religion On Secular Uses Of Hallowing Halls Through Words Or Through Deeds? Not “I’ll Pray For You” But “I Love You” Were The 20th Century Wars A Rebuke To Reason? Religion And The Alternatives Of Modernity and Post-Modernity Do The New Atheists Target Religion Too Broadly? “True” Christianity? “True” Christianity? (part 2) What’s In A Name? On Redefining Belief In God Rather Than Rejecting It Does Being A Theologian Require Being A Religious Believer? On What Counts As A Theological Position No More Theology Departments? A Statement Of My Teaching Philosophy Non-Tenured Faculty’s Freedom Of Speech “Wanted: Non-Philosophers To Do Philosophy” On The Goals Of Introductory Philosophy Courses On The Various Disciplines’ Resources For Engaging The Enduring Questions Philosophy Not As Exceptional, But As Specialized The Future Of Philosophy Publishing On The Pros And Cons Of Blogging As A Preferred Medium For Philosophy Some Qualifications Of My Suggestion For Moving Philosophy Debates To The Internet Amy Millan Covers Death Cab For Cutie (And I Review “My Favorite Book” By Stars) Lake Of Fire Why The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind Is My Favorite Film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer: The Best Film of 2006 Sex: The Horror and The Horrible “Therapeutic Projection” or “How Lars and the Real Girl Made Me Cry” Peter Bogdanovich’s “Running Down A Dream” Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers As Metaphor For The Excellent Nietzschean Soul Rough Sketches of Nietzsche’s Politics and Philosophy of Religion Thoughts on Style, Dignity, and Virtuous Self-Formation Why Worship Someone With Mysterious Motives? Freedom as a Power, Rather than as a Passive State Sincerity, Hypocrisy and Mark Sanford Why Do Torture And Increased Police Authority Increasingly Appeal To Americans? On The Powers Of Personal And Political Bodies Over Their Apparent Mental Leaders Kanye Disses Taylor Swift (On The Pusillanimity Of Joe Wilson And Kanye West Vs. The Magnanimity Of Beyonce Knowles And Barack Obama) Judge This: Derren Brown False Lesson In Mathematics For Britain France Considers Banning Burqas in Public and I Consider Haidt on Pluralism Playing Sarkozy’s Advocate Happy Birthday Dad!!!-
Your Thoughts
- Mike AKA MonolithTMA: Didn’t embed correctly and it’s a Pomplamoose video. It’s one I hadn’t...
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Stephen Pinker Makes The Case Against The "Blank Slate"
This entry was written by Daniel Fincke, posted on July 21, 2009 at 6:57 pm, filed under Biology, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Philosophy, Philosophy of Language, Psychology and tagged Anthropology, Genetics, Human Nature, Linguistics, Stephen Pinker, Twins. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.No Responses to “Stephen Pinker Makes The Case Against The "Blank Slate"”
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I had to read selections from his book on the blank slate for my Intro to Psych class; it was excellent! Thanks for this!
No problem, Evangelos! Good to see you back around these parts! I read a portion of his book The Language Instinct as part of teaching a new Intro syllabus last semester and it really changed my mind on a lot of things. So, I was eager to watch and then post this when I found it.