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Steven PinkerA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pinker explains that in Part 3 he’ll defend Enlightenment ideals from various naysayers, from populists to left-wing intellectuals and cultural pessimists. He begins by examining a misconception about Enlightenment thinkers: They didn’t, as many believe, argue that humans are entirely rational but rather that we’re often irrational and therefore should rely on reason more often. Pinker claims that nowadays even those who prefer feeling to thinking, or believe that trying to rationalize with people is futile, tend to defend their arguments with personal reasons rather than data, undermining their point. Much evidence shows how people can be irrational, from availability bias to confirmation bias and stereotyping, but we can still employ reason when we want to.
Kant, Spinoza, Hume, and Smith argued that people “ought to be rational” (353) and employ free speech, empirical testing, and logic, no matter how difficult. Pinker explains that while we have other primal instincts, we’re “a cognitive species that depends on explanations of the world” (353). Although “vulnerable” to fallacies, humans routinely question and correct them. Pinker explains why humans are “so easily led into folly” (355). He denies that poor education is the main reason that people embrace irrational ideas.
By Steven Pinker
How The Mind Works
How The Mind Works
Steven Pinker
The Better Angels of Our Nature
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Steven Pinker
The Blank Slate
The Blank Slate
Steven Pinker
The Language Instinct
The Language Instinct
Steven Pinker
The Sense of Style
The Sense of Style
Steven Pinker
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