TED2012
Steven Pinker and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: The long reach of reason
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Here's a TED first: an animated Socratic dialog! In a time when irrationality seems to rule both politics and culture, has reasoned thinking finally lost its power? Watch as psychologist Steven Pinker is gradually, brilliantly persuaded by philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein that reason is actually the key driver of human moral progress, even if its effect sometimes takes generations to unfold. The dialog was recorded live at TED, and animated, in incredible, often hilarious, detail by Cognitive.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein - Philosopher and writer
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein writes novels and nonfiction that explore questions of philosophy, morality and being. Full bioSteven Pinker - Psychologist
Steven Pinker is a professor of cognitive science (the study of the human mind) who writes about language, mind and human nature. Full bio
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein writes novels and nonfiction that explore questions of philosophy, morality and being. Full bioSteven Pinker - Psychologist
Steven Pinker is a professor of cognitive science (the study of the human mind) who writes about language, mind and human nature. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:13
["Rebecca Newberger Goldstein"]
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["Steven Pinker"]
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["The Long Reach of Reason"]
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Cabbie: Twenty-two dollars.
Steven Pinker: Okay.
Steven Pinker: Okay.
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Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: Reason
appears to have fallen on hard times:
appears to have fallen on hard times:
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Popular culture plumbs new depths of dumbth
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and political discourse has become a race
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to the bottom.
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We're living in an era of scientific creationism,
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9/11 conspiracy theories, psychic hotlines,
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and a resurgence of religious fundamentalism.
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People who think too well
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are often accused of elitism,
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and even in the academy,
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there are attacks on logocentrism,
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the crime of letting logic dominate our thinking.
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SP: But is this necessarily a bad thing?
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Perhaps reason is overrated.
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Many pundits have argued that a good heart
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and steadfast moral clarity
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are superior to triangulations
of overeducated policy wonks,
of overeducated policy wonks,
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like the best and brightest and that dragged us
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into the quagmire of Vietnam.
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And wasn't it reason that gave us the means
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to despoil the planet
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and threaten our species with
weapons of mass destruction?
weapons of mass destruction?
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In this way of thinking,
it's character and conscience,
it's character and conscience,
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not cold-hearted calculation, that will save us.
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Besides, a human being is not a brain on a stick.
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My fellow psychologists have shown that we're led
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by our bodies and our emotions
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and use our puny powers of reason
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merely to rationalize our gut feelings after the fact.
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RNG: How could a reasoned
argument logically entail
argument logically entail
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the ineffectiveness of reasoned arguments?
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Look, you're trying to persuade
us of reason's impotence.
us of reason's impotence.
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You're not threatening us or bribing us,
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suggesting that we resolve the issue
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with a show of hands or a beauty contest.
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By the very act of trying to
reason us into your position,
reason us into your position,
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you're conceding reason's potency.
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Reason isn't up for grabs here. It can't be.
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You show up for that debate
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and you've already lost it.
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SP: But can reason lead us in directions
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that are good or decent or moral?
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After all, you pointed out that reason
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is just a means to an end,
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and the end depends on the reasoner's passions.
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Reason can lay out a road
map to peace and harmony
map to peace and harmony
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if the reasoner wants peace and harmony,
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but it can also lay out a road
map to conflict and strife
map to conflict and strife
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if the reasoner delights in conflict and strife.
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Can reason force the reasoner to want
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less cruelty and waste?
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RNG: All on its own, the answer is no,
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but it doesn't take much to switch it to yes.
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You need two conditions:
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The first is that reasoners all care
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about their own well-being.
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That's one of the passions that has to be present
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in order for reason to go to work,
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and it's obviously present in all of us.
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We all care passionately
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about our own well-being.
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The second condition is that reasoners
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are members of a community of reasoners
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who can affect one another's well-being,
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can exchange messages,
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and comprehend each other's reasoning.
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And that's certainly true of our gregarious
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and loquatious species,
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well endowed with the instinct for language.
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SP: Well, that sounds good in theory,
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but has it worked that way in practice?
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In particular, can it explain
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a momentous historical development
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that I spoke about five years ago here at TED?
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Namely, we seem to be getting more humane.
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Centuries ago, our ancestors would burn cats alive
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as a form of popular entertainment.
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Knights waged constant war on each other
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by trying to kill as many of each
other's peasants as possible.
other's peasants as possible.
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Governments executed people for frivolous reasons,
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like stealing a cabbage
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or criticizing the royal garden.
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The executions were designed to be as prolonged
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and as painful as possible, like crucifixion,
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disembowelment, breaking on the wheel.
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Respectable people kept slaves.
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For all our flaws, we have abandoned
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these barbaric practices.
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RNG: So, do you think it's
human nature that's changed?
human nature that's changed?
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SP: Not exactly. I think we still harbor instincts
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that can erupt in violence,
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like greed, tribalism, revenge, dominance, sadism.
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But we also have instincts that can steer us away,
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like self-control, empathy, a sense of fairness,
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what Abraham Lincoln called
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the better angels of our nature.
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RNG: So if human nature didn't change,
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what invigorated those better angels?
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SP: Well, among other things,
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our circle of empathy expanded.
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Years ago, our ancestors would feel the pain
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only of their family and people in their village.
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But with the expansion of literacy and travel,
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people started to sympathize
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with wider and wider circles,
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the clan, the tribe, the nation, the race,
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and perhaps eventually, all of humanity.
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RNG: Can hard-headed scientists
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really give so much credit to soft-hearted empathy?
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SP: They can and do.
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Neurophysiologists have found neurons in the brain
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that respond to other people's actions
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the same way they respond to our own.
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Empathy emerges early in life,
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perhaps before the age of one.
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Books on empathy have become bestsellers,
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like "The Empathic Civilization"
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and "The Age of Empathy."
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RNG: I'm all for empathy. I mean, who isn't?
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But all on its own, it's a feeble instrument
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for making moral progress.
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For one thing, it's innately biased
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toward blood relations, babies
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and warm, fuzzy animals.
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As far as empathy is concerned,
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ugly outsiders can go to hell.
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And even our best attempts to work up sympathy
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for those who are unconnected with us
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fall miserably short, a sad truth about human nature
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that was pointed out by Adam Smith.
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Adam Smith: Let us suppose that the great empire
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of China was suddenly swallowed
up by an earthquake,
up by an earthquake,
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and let us consider how a
man of humanity in Europe
man of humanity in Europe
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would react on receiving intelligence
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of this dreadful calamity.
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He would, I imagine, first of all express very strongly
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his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people.
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He would make many melancholy reflections
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upon the precariousness of human life,
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and when all these humane sentiments
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had been once fairly expressed,
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he would pursue his business or his pleasure
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with the same ease and tranquility
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as if no such accident had happened.
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If he was to lose his little finger tomorrow,
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he would not sleep tonight,
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but provided he never saw them,
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he would snore with the most profound security
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over the ruin of a hundred million of his brethren.
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SP: But if empathy wasn't enough
to make us more humane,
to make us more humane,
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what else was there?
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RNG: Well, you didn't mention what might be
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one of our most effective better angels: reason.
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Reason has muscle.
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It's reason that provides the push to widen
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that circle of empathy.
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Every one of the humanitarian developments
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that you mentioned originated with thinkers
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who gave reasons for why some practice
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was indefensible.
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They demonstrated that the way people treated
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some particular group of others
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was logically inconsistent
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with the way they insisted
on being treated themselves.
on being treated themselves.
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SP: Are you saying that reason
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can actually change people's minds?
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Don't people just stick with whatever conviction
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serves their interests
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or conforms to the culture that they grew up in?
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RNG: Here's a fascinating fact about us:
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Contradictions bother us,
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at least when we're forced to confront them,
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which is just another way of saying
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that we are susceptible to reason.
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And if you look at the history of moral progress,
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you can trace a direct pathway
from reasoned arguments
from reasoned arguments
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to changes in the way that we actually feel.
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Time and again, a thinker would lay out an argument
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as to why some practice was indefensible,
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irrational, inconsistent with values already held.
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Their essay would go viral,
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get translated into many languages,
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get debated at pubs and coffee houses and salons,
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and at dinner parties,
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and influence leaders, legislators,
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popular opinion.
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Eventually their conclusions get absorbed
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into the common sense of decency,
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erasing the tracks of the original argument
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that had gotten us there.
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Few of us today feel any need to put forth
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a rigorous philosophical argument
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as to why slavery is wrong
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or public hangings or beating children.
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By now, these things just feel wrong.
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But just those arguments had to be made,
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and they were, in centuries past.
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SP: Are you saying that people needed
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a step-by-step argument to grasp
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why something might be a wee bit wrong
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with burning heretics at the stake?
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RNG: Oh, they did. Here's the French theologian
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Sebastian Castellio making the case.
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Sebastian Castellio: Calvin says that he's certain,
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and other sects say that they are.
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Who shall be judge?
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If the matter is certain, to whom is it so? To Calvin?
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But then, why does he write so
many books about manifest truth?
many books about manifest truth?
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In view of the uncertainty, we must define heretics
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simply as one with whom we disagree.
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And if then we are going to kill heretics,
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the logical outcome will be a war of extermination,
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since each is sure of himself.
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SP: Or with hideous punishments
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like breaking on the wheel?
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RNG: The prohibition in our constitution
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of cruel and unusual punishments
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was a response to a pamphlet circulated in 1764
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by the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria.
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Cesare Beccaria: As punishments
become more cruel,
become more cruel,
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the minds of men, which like fluids
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always adjust to the level of the objects
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that surround them, become hardened,
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and after a hundred years of cruel punishments,
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breaking on the wheel causes no more fear
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than imprisonment previously did.
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For a punishment to achieve its objective,
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it is only necessary that the harm that it inflicts
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outweighs the benefit that derives from the crime,
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and into this calculation ought to be factored
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the certainty of punishment
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and the loss of the good
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that the commission of the crime will produce.
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Everything beyond this is superfluous,
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and therefore tyrannical.
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SP: But surely antiwar movements depended
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on mass demonstrations
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and catchy tunes by folk singers
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and wrenching photographs
of the human costs of war.
of the human costs of war.
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RNG: No doubt, but modern anti-war movements
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reach back to a long chain of thinkers
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who had argued as to why we ought to mobilize
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our emotions against war,
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such as the father of modernity, Erasmus.
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Erasmus: The advantages derived from peace
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diffuse themselves far and wide,
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and reach great numbers,
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while in war, if anything turns out happily,
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the advantage redounds only to a few,
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and those unworthy of reaping it.
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One man's safety is owing
to the destruction of another.
to the destruction of another.
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One man's prize is derived
from the plunder of another.
from the plunder of another.
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The cause of rejoicings made by one side
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is to the other a cause of mourning.
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Whatever is unfortunate in war,
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is severely so indeed,
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and whatever, on the contrary,
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is called good fortune,
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is a savage and a cruel good fortune,
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an ungenerous happiness deriving
its existence from another's woe.
its existence from another's woe.
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SP: But everyone knows that the movement
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to abolish slavery depended on faith and emotion.
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It was a movement spearheaded by the Quakers,
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and it only became popular when
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel
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"Uncle Tom's Cabin" became a bestseller.
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RNG: But the ball got rolling a century before.
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John Locke bucked the tide of millennia
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that had regarded the practice as perfectly natural.
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He argued that it was inconsistent
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with the principles of rational government.
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John Locke: Freedom of men under government
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is to have a standing rule to live by
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common to everyone of that society
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and made by the legislative power erected in it,
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a liberty to follow my own will in all things
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where that rule prescribes not,
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not to be subject to the inconstant,
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uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man,
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as freedom of nature is to
be under no other restraint
be under no other restraint
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but the law of nature.
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SP: Those words sound familiar.
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Where have I read them before? Ah, yes.
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Mary Astell: If absolute sovereignty
be not necessary
be not necessary
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in a state, how comes it to be so in a family?
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Or if in a family, why not in a state?
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Since no reason can be alleged for the one
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that will not hold more strongly for the other,
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if all men are born free,
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how is it that all women are born slaves,
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as they must be if being subjected
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to the inconstant, uncertain,
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unknown, arbitrary will of men
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be the perfect condition of slavery?
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RNG: That sort of co-option
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is all in the job description of reason.
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One movement for the expansion of rights
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inspires another because the logic is the same,
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and once that's hammered home,
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it becomes increasingly uncomfortable
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to ignore the inconsistency.
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In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement
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inspired the movements for women's rights,
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12:47
children's rights, gay rights and even animal rights.
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But fully two centuries before,
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the Enlightenment thinker Jeremy Bentham
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had exposed the indefensibility
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of customary practices such as
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the cruelty to animals.
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Jeremy Bentham: The question
is not, can they reason,
is not, can they reason,
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nor can they talk, but can they suffer?
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RNG: And the persecution of homosexuals.
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JB: As to any primary mischief,
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it's evident that it produces no pain in anyone.
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On the contrary, it produces pleasure.
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The partners are both willing.
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If either of them be unwilling,
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the act is an offense,
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totally different in its nature of effects.
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It's a personal injury. It's a kind of rape.
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As to the any danger exclusive of pain,
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the danger, if any, much consist
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in the tendency of the example.
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But what is the tendency of this example?
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To dispose others to engage in the same practices.
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But this practice produces not pain of any kind
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to anyone.
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SP: Still, in every case, it took at least a century
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for the arguments of these great thinkers
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to trickle down and infiltrate
the population as a whole.
the population as a whole.
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It kind of makes you wonder about our own time.
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Are there practices that we engage in
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where the arguments against
them are there for all to see
them are there for all to see
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but nonetheless we persist in them?
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RNG: When our great grandchildren look back at us,
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will they be as appalled by some of our practices
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as we are by our slave-owning, heretic-burning,
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wife-beating, gay-bashing ancestors?
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SP: I'm sure everyone here
could think of an example.
could think of an example.
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RNG: I opt for the mistreatment of animals
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in factory farms.
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SP: The imprisonment of nonviolent drug offenders
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and the toleration of rape in our nation's prisons.
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RNG: Scrimping on donations to life-saving charities
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in the developing world.
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SP: The possession of nuclear weapons.
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14:32
RNG: The appeal to religion to justify
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the otherwise unjustifiable,
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such as the ban on contraception.
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SP: What about religious faith in general?
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RNG: Eh, I'm not holding my breath.
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SP: Still, I have become convinced
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that reason is a better angel
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that deserves the greatest credit
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14:48
for the moral progress our species has enjoyed
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and that holds out the greatest hope
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14:53
for continuing moral progress in the future.
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RNG: And if, our friends,
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14:58
you detect a flaw in this argument,
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just remember you'll be depending on reason
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to point it out.
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Thank you.
SP: Thank you.
SP: Thank you.
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(Applause)
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6995
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein - Philosopher and writerRebecca Newberger Goldstein writes novels and nonfiction that explore questions of philosophy, morality and being.
Why you should listen
In her latest book, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein makes the case for the importance of philosophy -- even as neuroscience tells us more about our brains, and connective technologies teach us more about the world around us. It's written in the form of a Socratic dialog, a form that Goldstein is passionate about teaching and exploring.
Meanwhile, her novels, from The Mind-Body Problem (Contemporary American Fiction) to 2011's 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (Vintage Contemporaries), use techniques of fiction to untangle philosophical questions, such as: How should we balance heart and mind? What should we have faith in?
In 1996 Goldstein became a MacArthur Fellow, receiving the prize popularly known as the “Genius Award.” She was designated Humanist of the Year 2011 by the American Humanist Association. She's also the author of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, a combination memoir and history.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein | Speaker | TED.com
Steven Pinker - Psychologist
Steven Pinker is a professor of cognitive science (the study of the human mind) who writes about language, mind and human nature.
Why you should listen
Steven Pinker grew up in the English-speaking community of Montreal but has spent his adult life bouncing back and forth between Harvard and MIT. He is interested in all aspects of human nature: how we see, hear, think, speak, remember, feel and interact.
To be specific: he developed the first comprehensive theory of language acquisition in children, used verb meaning as a window into cognition, probed the limits of neural networks and showed how the interaction between memory and computation shapes language. He has used evolution to illuminate innuendo, emotional expression and social coordination. He has documented historical declines in violence and explained them in terms of the ways that the violent and peaceable components of human nature interact in different eras. He has written books on the language instinct, how the mind works, the stuff of thought and the doctrine of the blank slate, together with a guide to stylish writing that is rooted in psychology.
In his latest book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, he writes about progress -- why people are healthier, richer, safer, happier and better educated than ever. His other books include The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, The Stuff of Thought, and The Better Angels of Our Nature.
Steven Pinker | Speaker | TED.com