Well, I finally got around to reading Pinker’s Blank Slate. Brilliant book, I have to admit, very cogent. I’ve been gradually giving up my “nurture” biases little by little over the years, but he gave me a pretty solid, definitive shove onto the “nature” side of things.
Now as far as intelligence and genes, which we were talking about earlier in the thread, I do think the distinction between what determines a mental ability and what controls the variance between groups of people in such an ability is still key to understanding what Pinker, and the research he bases his arguments on, really means. I am still skeptical that we know exactly what we’re measuring with a standard IQ test, or that it’s as useful as some claim in predicting the things we want to predict-potential to do well academically, in the job market, and so on. But clearly we are measuring something repeatable and real, and the variation between people in whatever that is is dominated by genes, that I now have to concede. Of course, as he points out, if genetics accounts for 30-70% of the variance, something else must account for the rest. It sounds like he suspects a lot of it is random developmental events, but I’m not sure he proved that case. He did demonstrate pretty clearly that early home/family environment ain’t it, at least barring extremely abusive or impoverished environments. In any case, I’m willing to concede that the “intelligences” we’ve been talking about are probably determined more by genes than any other single factor, and that does have some pretty big and interesting implications for social policy, which I think he only touched on lightly in the book.
Pinker was also pretty clear that the variance measures he is talking about apply to group averages, so acknowledging differences in specific mental abilities on average between groups is not a justification for stereotyping or discriminating against individuals based on their group membership. So whether males and females or various ethnic groups do or do not differ on average in one ability or another doesn’t guide us in how we treat any particular individual, for both practical and moral reasons. I think this is a very important nuance to keep in mind when talking about such group differences, since it’s easy to slide into vague or sloppy language like “Group X is better at Y than Group Z,” and basing a whole lot of bad decisions on that idea.
And then there’s his case about the influence of parenting behavior on how kids turn out. I have to say I found his chapter on that subject very pursuasive. I think it is clear that beyond genes and basic material support, the only thing parents do that substantively affects their childrens’ development is choosing the circumstances that will determine who their peer group is. I’ve generally believed for a long time that unless you go out of your way to screw up your kids, they’re likely to be fine regardless of what you do, and I think his data and arguments support that.
I also agree with him when he says quite clearly that this does not imply that how you interact with your kids is meaningless. To say that this is the logical consequence of the importance of genetics in personal development is like saying that life in the absence of God is meaningless. The religious believe it, but it is manifest nonsense easily refuted. Apart from what he decribes as a “moral duty” to care for your children, and the natural and undoubtedly evolutionarily derived impulse most parents have to care for their children, he makes a strong case that whether or not you can influence their ultimatge mental abilities, your interactions with your kids are important for psychological and emotional reasons, for the nature of the relationship you have with them now and in the future, and for the nature of the attitudes and ideas they will have about the world. You may not be able to change their ability to think, but up until peer group takes over about adolescence, you have a lot of influence on the content of their thoughts. And, finally, I really appreciated his comments about how much better it is to see our kids as persons in their own right from the very beginning, rather than as lumps of silly putty to be shaped into the form we think best. The anxiety, the silliness, and the outright harm of so much of the parenting technique industry that could be avoided just by understanding some real facts about how the mind works and develops is enormous, I’m sure.
Great read, and I’m currently trying to force it on everyone I know. Thanks, George and Doug, for pointing me to it. 
