Former MIT Colleague of Noam Chomsky and Current harvard Prof Steven Pinker Jumps the Shark
The Stuff of Thought
A book excerpt by Steven Pinker.
Steven Pinker
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Oct 18, 2008 | Updated: 12:29 p.m. ET Oct 18, 2008
On September 11, 2001, at 8:46 a.m., a hijacked airliner crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York. At 9:03 a.m. a second plane crashed into the south tower. The resulting infernos caused the buildings to collapse, the south tower after burning for an hour and two minutes, the north tower twenty-three minutes after that. The attacks were masterminded by Osama bin Laden, leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, who hoped to intimidate the United States into ending its military presence in Saudi Arabia and its support for Israel and to unite Muslims in preparation for a restoration of the caliphate.
9/11, as the happenings of that day are now called, stands as the most significant political and intellectual event of the twenty-first century so far. It has set off debates on a vast array of topics; I would like to explore a lesser-known debate triggered by 9/ 11. Exactly how many events took place in New York on that morning in September?
It could be argued that the answer is one. The attacks on the buildings were part of a single plan conceived in the mind of one man in service of a single agenda. They unfolded within a few minutes and yards of each other, targeting the parts of a complex with a single name, design, and owner. And they launched a single chain of military and political events in their aftermath.
Or it could be argued that the answer is two. The north tower and the south tower were distinct collections of glass and steel separated by an expanse of space, and they were hit at different times and went out of existence at different times.
The gravity of 9/11 would seem to make this entire discussion frivolous to the point of impudence. It's a matter of mere "semantics," as we say, with its implication of picking nits, splitting hairs, and debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. But this book is about semantics, and I would not make a claim on your attention if I did not think that the relation of language to our inner and outer worlds was a matter of intellectual fascination and real-world importance.
Though "importance" is often hard to quantify, in this case I can put an exact value on it: three and a half billion dollars. That was the sum in dispute in a set of trials determining the insurance payout to Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the World Trade Center site. Silverstein held insurance policies that stipulated a maximum reimbursement for each destructive "event." If 9/11 comprised a single event, he stood to receive three and a half billion dollars. If it comprised two events, he stood to receive seven billion. In the trials, the attorneys disputed the applicable meaning of the term event. The lawyers for the leaseholder defined it in physical terms (two collapses); those for the insurance companies defined it in mental terms (one plot). There is nothing "mere" about semantics!
Nor is the topic intellectually trifling. The 9/11 cardinality debate is not about the facts, that is, the physical events and human actions that took place that day. Admittedly, those have been contested as well: according to various conspiracy theories, the buildings were targeted by American missiles, or demolished by a controlled implosion, in a plot conceived by American neoconservatives, Israeli spies, or a cabal of psychiatrists. But aside from the kooks, most people agree on the facts. Where they differ is in the construal of those facts: how the intricate swirl of matter in space ought to be conceptualized by human minds. As we shall see, the categories in this dispute permeate the meanings of words in our language because they permeate the way we represent reality in our heads.
Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it is also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality--the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world. It is about the relation of words to a community--how a new word, which arises in an act of creation by a single speaker, comes to evoke the same idea in the rest of a population, so people can understand one another when they use it. It is about the relation of words to emotions: the way in which words don't just point to things but are saturated with feelings, which can endow the words with a sense of magic, taboo, and sin. And it is about words and social relations--how people use language not just to transfer ideas from head to head but to negotiate the kind of relationship they wish to have with their conversational partner.
A feature of the mind that we will repeatedly encounter in these pages is that even our most abstract concepts are understood in terms of concrete scenarios. That applies in full force to the subject matter of the book itself. In this introductory chapter I will preview some of the book's topics with vignettes from newspapers and the Internet that can be understood only through the lens of semantics. They come from each of the worlds that connect to our words--the worlds of thought, reality, community, emotions, and social relations.
Reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker. Copyright © 2008 by Steven Pinker.
I'm sputtering with anger...
I literally said "gaaaaah" out loud when I got to the bolded part.
The reason this pisses me off so much is that he COULD have written a book on a topic like this from a perspective that acknowledges the way language has been used to distort the reality of 9/11... and instead it's almost like he's offering us a dismissive "nyah nyah" and volunteering to perpetuate the distortion.
more Pinker on 9/11
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0143114247/ref=sib_fs_top?ie=UTF8&p=S00J...
That's the link to the Amazon preview which I think goes a bit farther into chapter 1 than the excerpt I posted. And yes, he mentions conspiracy theories again... Someone needs to explain to him that OBL did *not* mastermind 9/11 according to the OCT, that would be KSM... yeesh, what an SOB!
Pinker Debates Religion
Pinker Debates Religion
Psychology Professor argued issues of faith and morality with prominent rabbi
Published On Monday, October 27, 2008 10:50 PM
By DANIELLE J. KOLIN
Contributing Writer
Noted author and public speaker Rabbi David Wolpe debates the relevance of religion with psychology professor Steven Pinker last night.
Rabbi David J. Wolpe and psychology professor Steven Pinker debated the existence of God and the benefits of faith at Harvard Hillel last night.
The discussion, which focused on questions of morality and whether altruism can exist without faith, was cosponsored by Hillel and the Harvard Book Store to promote Wolpe's new book, "Why Faith Matters."
Wolpe, named the number one pulpit rabbi in America by Newsweek earlier this year, and Pinker, an avowed atheist and best-selling author of books on the human mind and language, passed a microphone back and forth, engaging in an enthusiastic conversation without a moderator.
"If you're going to hang yourself, you should do it from a high tree," joked Wolpe about speaking alongside Pinker.
The California-based rabbi launched the discussion of morality by asking Pinker why individuals would tip waiters without the moral dictates of religion.
"If there is no God, and the basis of kindness is evolutionary development, what does it really matter if I don't leave a tip?" Wolpe asked Pinker.
Pinker addressed the issue of generosity from a psychological standpoint.
He explained that people are altruistic for three reasons: because they want others to reciprocate, because others’ judgements pressure them, and because they must commit to moral principles to win others’ trust.
"The ultimate way to show that you have integrity is to have integrity," Pinker said.
Despite the spirited debate, neither budged from his original position, and the discussion remained congenial.
An hour into the conversation, the audience, a diverse mix of Harvard students and area residents, was invited to ask questions of the two.
One audience member pushed Wolpe to explain his belief in God.
"Not all the rhetoric of scientific intimacy begins to capture what is another human being," Wolpe said.
Another question focused on how Pinker could believe in a "greater good" without faith.
"There can be a greater good in the same way that there are mathematical truths," Pinker said. "I believe in morality. I just don't see what morality has to do with God."
After the debate, Wolpe stayed behind to sell and sign copies of his new book.
"I wouldn't say I agreed with either of them,†said audience member Benjamin A. Lerner '11. "I thought Professor Pinker's arguments were a little more precise."
Though no conclusion was reached, the debate did spur discussion of rarely-broached topics.
"The soul as a separate entity from the body is something that not too many people outside religious circles speak about these days," Wolpe said.
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How can Steven Pinker lay claim to either objective rationality or any kind of morality when on one of the first pages of his new book he says:
"The 9/11 cardinality debate is not about the facts, that is, the physical events and human actions that took place that day. Admittedly, those have been contested as well: according to various conspiracy theories, the buildings were targeted by American missiles, or demolished by a controlled implosion, in a plot conceived by American neoconservatives, Israeli spies, or a cabal of psychiatrists. But aside from the kooks, most people agree on the facts."
With this statement and with the rest of his opening chapter in which he plays fast and loose with the facts about 9/11 Pinker demonstrates that he is guilty of the same faith based arguments as are religious people. He does this without understanding the simplest facts of the case. He continues despite official denials to suggest that Osama bin Laden planned 9/11 (according to the official version it was Guantanamo resident Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who masterminded the conspiracy, though his testimony was obtained using torture.) He derisively dismisses as kooks the millions of Americans and people around the world who understand--not believe--understand that the three skyscrapers at the world trade center were demolished with explosives and not simply as a result of the two plane impacts, including the over 500 licensed architects and engineers at ae911truth.org who presumably know more about buildings than does Pinker.
To take these positions Pinker has to ignore physical evidence found in the debris such as the copious amounts of molten iron (impossible to be the result of jet fuel fires or any fire outside of a foundry), eyewitness accounts including from firefighters, police, and people like Felipe David who was severely burned and nearly killed by an explosion in the subbasement of the north tower seconds *before* the first plane struck. He must also ignore the numerous inconsistencies, errors, and flat-out lies that have been part of the official account from the beginning. His faith in the belief that those who think explosives were used are kooks cannot even be supported by the government's own report on the buildings, which incredibly conducted not a single test for the presence of explosive traces on the debris from the twin towers and world trade center building 7 (which would, in Pinker's world, be the first and only steel-framed high rise in history to collapse into its footprint because of a fire.)
In summary, Stevn Pinker's beliefs about 9/11 are faith-based, not fact-based, and speak either to his inability or unwillingness to consider the facts. In other words, Pinker knows how to talk the talk of skepticism and free inquiry when he is tilting at believers in religion and God but when it comes to secular issues like the reality of a serious crime he becomes as blind, dogmatic and vicious as any enemy of Galileo.
Excellent concluding paragraph.
n/t
thanks C455!
Here's some more pinker on 9/11 (from the "Skeptical Inquirer" no less!):
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2003_skepticalinquirer.html
To the Editors:
Chapman and Harris are right to question the costs in money, opportunities, and civil liberties of many of the policies adopted in response to 9/11. And they are right to call attention to the vulnerability of the human mind to fallacies in statistical reasoning, as in people's overestimation of the dangers posed by air travel, shark attacks, and trace levels of carcinogens. But they are not correct in saying that the responses to 9/11 are consequences of fallacious statistical reasoning. The classic experiments by Paul Slovic, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman demonstrating those fallacies presupposes a number of conditions that are not met by the events of 9/11.
First, since every event is unique, estimating risk requires one to define some class of events to be treated as equivalent, and then to compare the frequency of those events with the number of opportunities for such events to occur. For a singular event like 9/11, the equivalence class could be defined in many ways. If it is defined as "airplanes crashed into buildings," then the probability of the event multiplied by the number of deaths per event may indeed be smaller than other risks we tolerate. (Even then, one could question C&H's characterization of the casualty rates for 9/11-like events, because if a few parameters had been different - the hour of the day, the time available for people to escape before the towers collapsed, the success of the passenger mutiny over Pennsylvania - the death toll could have been far higher.) But if one defines the class as "acts designed to inflict as many American deaths as possible" - which could include nuclear bombs simultaneously set off in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago - then the multiplication gives a very different result, and taking expensive measures to prevent such events is not necessarily irrational. Similarly, one gets very different risk estimates for the class "anthrax attacks" (probably small) and the class "biological attacks, including smallpox" (possibly catastrophic).
In general, it is fairly straightforward to define an equivalence class for events with physical definitions such as plane crashes, shark attacks, and lung cancer deaths. But it is not at all straightforward to define the equivalence class for events such as terrorist attacks, which are limited only by the ideology, ingenuity, and resources of the perpetrators. Prior to 9/11, people had little reason to estimate that the equivalence class "terrorist attack" included massive destruction of American lives and landmarks brought about by well-funded suicidal fanatics exploiting hitherto unrecognized vulnerabilities of a technologically advanced democracy. The events of 9/11 provide new information relevant to estimating those unknowns.
Second, a probability estimate is specific to an interval of time in which the causal structure of the world remains unchanged. If the world has changed, all bets are off. If I notice that a nefarious character has just tampered with a slot machine, then ignoring the published odds is not fallacious. Or to take an example from the psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, it would not be irrational to keep one's child out of a river that had no previous fatalities after hearing that a neighbor's child was attacked there by a crocodile that morning: there was no crocodile in the river before then, but now there is. For this reason one cannot use the rate of major terrorist attacks in, say, the past 10 years to estimate the rate in the next 10 years. Wahabism and anti-Americanism may be more widespread, nuclear weapons more available, copycats more emboldened, and so on. Because of these uncertainties, anyone who claims to have calculated the mathematically correct probability that a horrendous terrorist attack will take place in the next year would be talking through his hat.
There is a third reason that terrorist attacks cannot be equated with the kinds of risks that people have been shown to treat irrationally. Nonhuman causes of deaths (such as sharks, airplane part failures, and carcinogens) don't take into account how people react to them. Human causes of deaths (such as terrorists) do. Bin Laden had no negotiable demands, but thought that Americans society was so decadent and spiritually bankrupt that a few easily inflicted humiliating blows would lead to its collapse. A public response of defiance and solidarity, and the implementation of extensive preventive security measures, could change such calculations in the minds of future terrorists. Similarly, if we calibrated our response to the anthrax attacks by cost-benefit comparisons to other risks, future bioterrorists could be emboldened to inflict exactly as many deaths as we decided we could endure. But pulling out all the stops to combat this new kind of threat, even if seemingly irrational on narrow actuarial grounds in the short run, could deter perpetrators in the long run, who would have to factor this determination into their own calculations. Another way of putting it is that dealing with terrorists is a problem in game theory, not just a problem in risk estimation.
I don't disagree with Chapman and Harris's opposition to some of the measures taken by the Bush administration and other authorities. But it is not correct to call the strong response to 9/11 a symptom of fallacious statistical reasoning or human cognitive limitations.
Steven Pinker
Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
MIT
more Pinker on 9/11
And when you think about it, the doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth. Just remember the most famous people in recent memory who acted in expectation of a reward in the hereafter: the conspirators who hijacked the airliners on 9/11.
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2007%20The%20Mystery%20of%2...
Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. Morality comes from a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe. Like physical evolution, it does not require a white-coated technician in the sky.
http://www.atheisttoolbox.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3846
morality in practice
Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality. But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. ..P
although i absolutely adore and embrace the "theory" of evolution...
i do believe that in true practice, religion would and should give forgiveness, justice, and no more 9/11s.
which religion gave us 9/11 again?
Zionism?
Jesus H.
I have what has become for me an inevitable question when faced with such eagerness to swallow whole the scary Islamofascist mythos (bin Laden had no negotiable demands! they just hate our decadent culture! aaaaaahhh!) and I found the answer at wikipedia.
"[I]t would not be irrational to keep one's child out of a river that had no previous fatalities after hearing that a neighbor's child was attacked there by a crocodile that morning: there was no crocodile in the river before then, but now there is."
This is a good metaphor. What if your neighbor was a pathological liar and child molester and a neighborhood kid had gone missing -- eaten by a crocodile, according to your other neighbor, Harley Guy? What would be the significance, then, of just putting your head down and keeping your own child out of the river? Any actions taken to promote security rely on accurate information about reality. (duh.) Faith-based hypocritical crap is not gonna work.
100 most influential people in the world
puke puke puke Â
how can so many powerful and prominent  intellectual minds be contained in the same body-habiti with such morally depraved souls
yes, great summation, Gre...
 wish more would drink from this well.
thanks Kate
Well, we'll see if anyone at Harvard is paying attention. We'll see if they leave my comment up or remove it, and we'll see if anyone has any good response. Then we'll see how many more people stop to talk to 9/11 guy. And how many more people take 9/11 flyers left around campus. And how many more bulletin boards will be rearranged and purged of 9/11 flyers! :)
they deleted it.
Just sayin'.
tilting
i especially like your use of this little verb!
as in "tilting at windmills"
i copied the link and just emailed to a bunch of folks...most of whom are not 911 truth enthusiasts...