What Nature Gave Us: Steven Pinker on the Rules of Reason

Geoffrey Galt Harpham

doi:10.26613/esic.6.2.302

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What Nature Gave Us: Steven Pinker on the Rules of Reason

Geoffrey Galt Harpham

Published/Copyright: December 14, 2022

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From the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture Volume 6 Issue 2

Abstract

Steven Pinker argues that rationality represents both a “patrimony,” a human endowment exhibited even in the behaviors of “primitive” societies, and a powerful force for good. At the same time, Pinker describes rationality as a “scarce” resource in the contemporary world, one that must be defined, defended, and deployed against the many destructive forms of irrationality to which we are prone. In order to avert a looming “Tragedy of the Commons,” Pinker proposes that rationality should be considered not just a cognitive benefit but a moral imperative. In doing so, however, he argues against the Enlightenment tradition in which the individual, rather than the “Commons,” is the final arbiter. The fundamental tension in Pinker’s argument is between a “primitive” process of collective reasoning that produces a stable but nonprogressive society and a “modern” orientation toward the individual that has brought us to the brink of political chaos and ecological disaster.

Keywords: rationality; modernity; fallacies; biases; nature; irrationality; morality

Published Online: 2022-12-14

Published in Print: 2022-12-01

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.26613/esic.6.2.302

Keywords for this article

rationality; modernity; fallacies; biases; nature; irrationality; morality