
	Where results make sense

Topic: The Blank Slate

Related Topics

Tabula rasa

Avalloc

NHS Foundation Trust

History of Kashmir

Art Alexakis

Lake

Pascagoula

SPL

709

Piano blues

	Tabula rasa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Tabula rasa (Latin: "scraped tablet", though often translated "blank slate") is the notion that individual human beings are born "blank" (with no built-in mental content), and that their identity is defined entirely by events after birth.
		On the one hand, the theory of a "blank slate" is attractive since it supposes that innate mental differences between normal human beings do not and cannot exist; therefore, racism and sexism are profoundly illogical.
		Some are also attracted to the idea of a "blank slate" due to a fear of being determined, or even influenced, by their genes (though why being determined or influenced by society is better is a difficult question).
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Blank_slate (813 words)

	Encyclopedia: The Blank Slate (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a 2002 book (published by Penguin Putnam, ISBN 0670031518) by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of psychology, claiming that the human mind is shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations.
		Pinker claims these fears are non sequiturs, and that the blank slate view of human nature would actually be a greater threat if it were true.
		He also argues that grounding moral values in claims about a blank slate opens them to possibilty of being overturned by future empirical discoveries; and that belief in a blank slate human nature encourages destructive social trends such as persecution of the successful and totalitarian social engineering.
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/The-Blank-Slate (746 words)

	The Blank Slate
		Steven Pinker defines "Blank Slate" early in his book: It is "the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves" (2).
		Skinner, a behaviorist and therefore a believer in the Blank Slate, argued in his book that language was learned through rewards and punishments—positive and negative reinforcement.
		The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine are facets of the same understanding of humanity, says Pinker.
	www.jochnowitz.net /Essays/BlankSlate.html (3138 words)

	Blank Slate
		On one side is a militant denial of human nature, a conviction that the mind of a child is a blank slate that is subsequently inscribed by parents and society.
		Blank is blank, so if we are all blank slates, the reasoning goes, we must all be equal.
		Marx did not explicitly embrace the blank slate, but he was adamant that human nature has no enduring properties: "All history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature," he wrote.
	home.att.net /~p.entrekin/article1.htm (4155 words)

	Vinod's Blog:The Blank Slate
		In the question of imperfectability, I prefer Pinker's treatment in a separate interview about the Blank Slate, where he cites the example of ideas baked into the US constitution aimed to counteract the individual pursuit of status and vainglory.
		For the Gene Expressions folks, Blank Slate must be utterly passe.
		Education is neither writing on a blank slate [in contrast to prevailing theories such as Rote memorization] nor allowing a child's nobility to flower [in contrast to more nouveau ones such as Whole Language].
	www.vinod.com /blog/Books/TheBlankSlate.html (2003 words)

	Pinker (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The slate cannot be blank if different genes can make it more or less smart, articulate, adventurous, shy, happy, conscientious, neurotic, open, introverted, giggly, spatially challenged, or likely to dip buttered toast in coffee.
		It is the thrill of discoveries that could never be made within the boundaries of a single discipline, such as universals of beauty, the logic of language, and the components of the moral sense.
		A nonblank slate means that a tradeoff between freedom and material equality is inherent to all political systems.
	userwww.service.emory.edu /~eusher/quotes/pinker.html (2299 words)

	The Blank Slate - EvoWiki (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The Blank Slate is a book written by the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker.
		The book's purpose is to counter what Pinker describes as "the modern denial of human nature." This denial, he claims, is driven by a "blank slate" paradigm in which it is taken as a fundamental assumption (usually implicitly) that no aspects of human behavior could have their origins in biology.
		Pinker argues against this notion while making sure to assuage the fears of those who believe that acknowledging that some behavioral variation is biological is tantamount to genetic determinism, and that this will lead to a repeat of one of the harmful ideologies (Naziism, Social Darwinism) that took hold in the 20th century.
	wiki.cotch.net /wiki.phtml?title=The_Blank_Slate (227 words)

	ajc.com \| Opinion \| 'Blank' slate born quite full \| ajc.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		His book, "The Blank Slate," issued in paperback this month, argues that many intellectuals have denied the importance of human nature by asserting that environment alone shapes who we are.
		[Blank Slate being the notion that humans are born as tabula rasa, literally "scraped tablet," that will be filled by experience, and Noble Savage referring to the idea that humans in their natural, primitive state are "selfless, peaceable and untroubled, and that blights such as greed, anxiety and violence are the products of civilization."]
		Traditional education is based in large part on the Blank Slate: children come to school empty and have knowledge deposited in them, to be reproduced later on tests.
	www.ajc.com /opinion/content/opinion/0903/21pinker.html?urac=n&urvf=10... (1690 words)

	Julian's Jabberings: The Blank Slate
		Much of the book rebuts the Blank Slate theory, in which people are solely influenced by their environment.
		Pinker tears apart two other theories that he associates with the Blank Slate: the Noble Savage belief that man was much better before civilization corrupted him and the Ghost in the Machine conception of the mind existing in a separate sphere than the body.
		I was often wary of his straw-man portrayal of the Blank Slate advocates, and his personal attacks on some of them seemed irrelevant when weighing their competing claims.
	www.mindspring.com /~teleri/julian/2004/11/blank-slate.html (424 words)

	WNYC - Reading Room: The Blank Slate
		"Blank slate" is a loose translation of the medieval Latin term tabula rasa-literally, "scraped tablet." It is commonly attributed to the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), though in fact he used a different metaphor.
		The doctrines of the Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine-or, as philosophers call them, empiricism, romanticism, and dualism-are logically independent, but in practice they are often found together.
		The Blank Slate naturally coexists with the Ghost in the Machine, too, since a slate that is blank is a hospitable place for a ghost to haunt.
	www.wnyc.org /books/5373 (3956 words)

	Stephen Pinker : The Blank Slate : Evolutionary Psychology
		These "myths" are variously labelled as the blank slate, the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine.
		According to Pinker the blank slate myth holds that that the human mind has no unique structure and that its entire organization comes from the environment via socialization and learning.
		The blank slate "myth" is held to be illogical as Human beings do seem to be innately responsive from an early age - dynamically equipped to readily make "sense" of complex environments.
	www.age-of-the-sage.org /scientist/stephen_pinker.html (669 words)

	Reason: Biology vs. the Blank Slate: Evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker deconstructs the great myths about ...
		His new book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Viking), is likely to continue his string of publishing successes -- and to keep him at the red-hot center of discussions over the meaning and implications of the increasingly important field of evolutionary psychology.
		Pinker: The blank slate is the doctrine that the mind has no unique structure and that its entire organization comes from the environment via socialization and learning.
		The blank slate mentality is popular with people who believe that any human trait can be altered with the right changes in social institutions.
	reason.com /0210/fe.rb.biology.shtml (4407 words)

	SUMMARY (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The fear of imperfectability and the resultant embrace of the Blank Slate are rooted in a pair of fallacies: the naturalistic fallacy and its converse, the moralistic fallacy.
		It brandishes the Blank Slate to deny innate differences in male and female brains and trumpets the Noble Savage to focus blame on culture for sexploitations.
		The Blank Slate is an empirical hypothesis about how the brain works and we can ask if it is true.
	abskeptic.htmlplanet.com /files/bookclub_200302_slate.htm (2355 words)

	The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker - Penguin Group (USA) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		"Blank slate" is a loose translation of the medieval Latin term tabula rasa—literally, "scraped tablet." It is commonly attributed to the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), though in fact he used a different metaphor.
		The doctrines of the Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine—or, as philosophers call them, empiricism, romanticism, and dualism—are logically independent, but in practice they are often found together.
		So a blank slate, compared with one filled with motives, is bound to impress us more by its inability to do harm than by its inability to do good.
	www.penguinputnam.com /nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0670031518,00.html?sym=SYN& (5942 words)

	The Great Debate: Reflections on the Blank Slate
		Pinker thinks it to be an incoherent idea; 'Blank slates don't do anything,' whereas the human mind does many things; he pointed to two examples; that we are all born with a natural ability to use language and that babies appear to have distinct preferences and characters from birth.
		He hears the blank slate idea being asserted by academics and politicians alike; for example in the area of research on parenting there is an implicit assumption that parental practice shapes a child, especially in the discussion of problem behaviour such as violence.
		In 'The Blank Slate' he argues that violence has an evolutionary logic, but that we are programmed to develop contingent strategies for violence; 'Animals deploy aggression in highly selective ways and humans are, of course, even more calculating.
	www.thegreatdebate.org.uk /BlankslateCH.html (2516 words)

	Barnes & Noble.com - The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - Steven Pinker - Hardcover
		He shows how many intellectuals have denied the existence of human nature by embracing three linked dogmas: the Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), the Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society), and the Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology).
		The blank slate idea was based on the intention of making racism, sexism and class prejudice 'factually untenable' and over the years it grew into an 'official theory,' enforced by hook and by crook.
		The exploration of the blank slate and the ghost in the machine and how it has seeped into our political systems and social morality creating a dead lock between what Pinker describes as a genetically determined juxtaposition between a Tragic Vision and Utopian Vision are well explored.
	btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com /booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?btob=Y&ean=9780670031511 (2258 words)

	Gene Expression: The Blank Slate Asymmetry
		While it is certainly true that coercive eugenics has had a sordid history in the 20th century, there is a missing point here that is obvious by its absence: the polar opposite ideology of the "blank slate" has directly lead to the deaths of one hundred million and the misery of countless more.
		Let no one ever say that the blank slate is inherently "good", or that the moral high ground should be ceded to those who deny a role for human nature.
		The ideology of the blank slate is the denial of humanity itself.
	www.gnxp.com /MT2/archives/001871.html?entry=1871 (1865 words)

	purevolume™ \| Blank Slate
		In a day when there are 60 of the same bands playing 60 of the same songs, you look for a difference, but rarely find one.
		Together for four years, Blank Slate offers audiences a unique sound filling the void left by the common band.
		Because of their training through high school and college, Blank Slate has evolved into a musically superior band.
	www.purevolume.com /blankslate/bio (207 words)

	Blank Slate
		We are not sure, and the blank slate contains the benefit of the doubt.
		Even if Pinker is right about the innateness of personality, and parents' lack of influence over their children - a point which readers will be likely to reject from experience, rather than through denial - these are only the outlines of a person.
		Instead of a blank slate, we might think of the inherited self as an unfurnished house: what we put in it does not change the structure, but it makes all the difference.
	homepage.ntlworld.com /marek.kohn/slate.html (1095 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Allen Lane Science S.): Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		For Pinker, the belief that we are all born as "blank slates" upon which culture places its decisive imprint is not only wrong but dangerous.
		It was very liberating to read, as it deconstucted those annoying theories of the blank slate, the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine.
		As Dr. Pinker puts it in Blank Slate: "a realism about the imperfect emotions we actually have may bring more happiness than an illusion about the ideal emotions we wish we had." His arguments against the perceived risk that evolutionary psychology will lead to nihilism are another notable strength of Blank Slate.
	www.amazon.co.uk /exec/obidos/ASIN/0713992565 (1317 words)

	Greenstone Slate
		A slate roof simply has no equal in durability, and its natural beauty enhances the aesthetic design of nearly any building with its rich natural color and texture.
		Slate is a metamorphic stone and is essentially laminated rock -- which is why it has the ability to be split into slate tiles.
		The geological conditions in the Vermont region when its slate was formed, resulted in some of the world's strongest, highest density slate.
	www.greenstoneslate.com (305 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Penguin Press Science S.): Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Regardless of whether this claim is valid, it doesn't demonstrate a correlation between the Blank Slate and totalitarianism.
		Firstly, it takes a lot of "social engineering" (something that Pinker blames on the Blank Slate) to eradicate large chunks of history (in which utilities and communication systems were perfected not by profit-motive but by public funding - the profiteers capitalised late in the development).
		The blank slate view of the mind, along with its fallacious fellows, the noble savage and the "ghost in the machine," have a long tradition in Western culture.
	www.amazon.co.uk /exec/obidos/ASIN/014027605X (3014 words)

	Putty in your hands
		The Blank Slate: the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves - it’s the false hope precariously underpinning social engineering.
		While abandoning the belief in the idea of the blank slate may be seen as an intellectual revolution, few people really believed in it anyway.
		He suggests that although the blank slate theory has honourable origins, the attempt to remove racism, sexism and class prejudice from society - its “evil” side - is the application of social engineering.
	www.talking-fish.com /texts/lad.php?artId=94 (736 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Books \| By genre \| Observer review: The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
		The notion of the tabula rasa, 'the blank slate', is utterly wrong, he insists.
		Stalin didn't inflict his misery because he believed in the blank slate; he did it because he was tyrant who merely grabbed the first doctrine that came his way, just as Hitler misappropriated the ideas of Darwin.
		In short, The Blank Slate looks a bit ragged, though ultimately Pinker is probably closer to the truth than his opponents realise.
	books.guardian.co.uk /reviews/healthmindandbody/0,6121,792111,00.html (1191 words)

	Blank Slate Board Books
		Blank Slate™ Board Books is a do it yourself kit to instantly publish high quality children’s board books at home, in school, at work, or anywhere you have a computer and printer.
		Blank Slate™ Board Books are durable and the size is just right for kids to hold and for carrying around with you anywhere.
		Blank Slate™ Board Books' do-it-yourself method of publishing is a great project for the home, for school, or for an early literacy program.
	www.blankslatebooks.com (246 words)

	Amazon.com: The Blank Slate : The Modern Denial of Human Nature: Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		What might amaze is the persistent, often vitriolic resistance to these findings Pinker presents and systematically takes apart, decrying the hold of the "blank slate" and other orthodoxies on intellectual life.
		The Blank Slate is a vaccination against the characteristic follies and errors of postmodernism and as such should be required reading for all students at our often diseased universities.
		The later chapters are unobjectionable in their liberal slant regarding feminism, politics, child development etc. It is in the first few chapters where Pinker bares his teeth, as he lays out the scientific argument for his stance.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0142003344?v=glance (5166 words)

	THE BLANK SLATE - Steven Pinker - Penguin UK
		When we are born we are a blank slate on which our experiences of the world are written, and as we grow older they define who we are.
		In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, world-renowned thinker and author of The Language Instinct, argues that the truth about our identity has been obscured by this beguiling and pervasive notion, which denies what is at the very heart of our being - our innate human nature.
		Examining as it does the very foundation of human identity, The Blank Slate is essential reading in an age increasingly troubled and fascinated by the amazing discoveries we have made about the human mind, evolution and our genetic inheritance.
	www.greatthamesread.co.uk /nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_014188584X,00.html (365 words)

Try your search on: Qwika (all wikis)