Pinkerism
The literature of Psychological Darwinism is full of what appear to be fallacies of rationalisation: arguments where the evidence offered that an interest in Y is the motive for a creature’s behaviour is primarily that an interest in Y would rationalise the behaviour if it were the creature’s motive. [Steven] Pinker’s book [How the Mind Works] provides so many examples that one hardly knows where to start. Here he is on friendship:
“Once you have made yourself valuable to someone, the person becomes valuable to you. You value him or her because if you were ever in trouble, they would have a stake – albeit a selfish stake – in getting you out. But now that you value the person, they should value you even more … because of your stake in rescuing him or her from hard times … This runaway process is what we call friendship.”
And here he is on why we like to read fiction: “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?” Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance.
[Jerry Fodor (1998) via Alan Jacobs]
