ABSTRACT
Can a theory of human nature be neutral on the perennial question of nature and nurture? It would seem not, especially today, when much of the discussion about human nature is a response to Darwinism, which offers a new context for many classic questions about free will and human beings’ inherent egoism or altruism. Steven Pinker identifies three doctrines about human nature which, in the course of the twentieth century, have emerged as sacred cows for many1 and, for a few intellectual renegades, as the target of their attacks on the ideological status quo. The first and most encompassing of these is the Blank Slate – “the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves.”2 For many, this doctrine represents the hope that our moral sensibilities may be propitiously refashioned by enlightened social policies. The second doctrine, the Noble Savage, further encourages this optimism. Here is the view that human beings are innately good-natured and that any evidence to the contrary is the contingent product of defective social institutions or corrupting parenting philosophies (à la Rousseau). Pinker adopts Gilbert Ryle’s famous expression to designate the third doctrine, The Ghost in the Machine – the position that the soul is an non-material entity which, though residing in a physical body, can potentially exist and function independently of it.
