Short Quiz – Steven Pinker Re-Inventing “The Golden Rule”

[johnkarls]

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1. Is Steven Pinker a psychology professor rather than a philosophy professor?

2. As a psychology professor, does Steven Pinker have a PhD?

3. What does “PhD” mean?

4. If “PhD” means “Doctor of Philosophy” of whatever (biology, astrophysics, chemistry, etc. – even psychology), is a “Doctor of Philosophy of Psychology” best situated to be our guide vis-à-vis “The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress” (the sub-title of his book)?

5. Does Steven Pinker posit that “progress” (the fourth element of his sub-title) is the goal of “reason, science and humanism?

6. Focusing on the first of Steven Pinker’s “Big Three,” is it distressing that “Big Tech” is, as we discussed at length in our Jan 13 meeting, trying to impose censorship on the nation?

7. Have we been witnessing for several decades now the eradication of “freedom of speech” in our nation’s leading universities?

8. Is the war against “freedom of speech” getting even nastier in the next evolution of censorship – “cancel culture”?

9. Turning to the second of Steven Pinker’s “Big Three,” is “science” effectively a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of “humanism” or “enlightenment” – or is it often diametrically opposed such as, for example, when it is used to create weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, etc.)?

10. Isn’t then the key to Steven Pinker’s “progress” the ethics of the nation’s and the world’s leaders?

11. And shouldn’t the “bed rock” principle on which the other principles are built be “reason” for which the sine qua non is “freedom of speech”??? And not the censorship and “cancel culture” into which our nation has descended???

12. If our nation is able to restore “freedom of speech,” then is Steven Pinker correct that we should be guided by “humanism” which Steven Pinker summarizes most succinctly (p. 410) with a quotation from Spinoza – “Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of humankind”?

13. Is this nothing more than a long-winded re-statement of “The Golden Rule” – “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You”?

14. Is “The Golden Rule” the basis of all of the world’s major religions – defined as more than one billion adherents – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism?

15. Does Steven Pinker want to promote “humanism,” which he describes (also on p. 410) as “good without God” because so many of the world’s religions have been occasionally used by evil people to promote temporal goals?

16. For example, Buddhism has perhaps the greatest reputation among the world’s major religions for being peaceful, but wasn’t more than 90% of the Japanese population Buddhist when Japan engaged in “the rape of China” kicking off World War II and when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor making World War II a truly “world war”?

17. Does Steven Pinker think that human beings are basically “good” so that promoting a new quasi-religion of “goodness” can’t possibly be perverted and can’t possibly fail to succeed in making this “vale of tears” a “heaven on earth”?

18. Does Steven Pinker mention “Lord of the Flies” – a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Goldring – whose thesis is that human beings are basically evil as he illustrates with a fictitious story of British school boys who are marooned during World War II on a deserted island when their airplane crashes killing all of the adults – and the British school boys immediately descend into murder, cannibalism, etc.?

19. So why does Steven Pinker think that human beings can be made to do “good” without being motivated by “The Fear of God” (or “The Fear of Allah” since “Allah” is the Arabic word for the God of Abraham and Moses)?

20. Or at least the “Fear of Re-Incarnation” DOWN the animal chain rather than UP THE ANIMAL CHAIN TOWARD NIRVANA (NB: re-incarnation is basic to both Hinduism and Buddhism which is not surprising since the first Buddha died still thinking he was a Hindu monk)?

21. Is Steven Pinker also anti-intellectual in his omnipresent attacks throughout “Enlightenment Now” on religions of any kind?

22. Going back to Steven Pinker’s PhD of Psychology (i.e., “Doctor of Philosophy” of psychology), isn’t the reason why “PhD” is a mark of a modicum of knowledge in a particular field such as astrophysics or chemistry that philosophy is the study of how one knows WHAT ONE THINKS ONE KNOWS about anything such as astrophysics or chemistry???

23. Is “existentialism” a branch of philosophy which homes in on “how one knows WHAT ONE THINKS ONE KNOWS” about anything?

24. BTW, is “existential” as in “existential threat” a modern-day perversion of the historical term for the “existentialism” branch of philosophy WHICH PERVERSION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH EXISTENTIALISM??? In other words, one of the many pseudo-intellectual perversions of words and their meanings???

25. Is René Descartes the most-famous “existentialist” philosopher?

26. Was/is he famous for his statement – “I think, therefore I am”?

27. Does everybody overlook his next sentence (both sentences appear in both his “Discourse on Method” and his “Principles of Philosophy”) – and I am paraphrasing since I don’t have his works in front of me at the moment – “Even if I am deluded into falsely believing that I am thinking, nonetheless there has to be something that is capable of being deluded, so I still exist”?

28. Does existentialism and Descartes teach that the only way you know anything about the rest of the world is through your five senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell?

29. And then do existentialism and Descartes go on to ask whether you have ever awakened from a “nightmare” in a cold sweat?

30. And, if so, whether the “nightmare” seemed real??? And if you claim it didn’t, what was the reason for “the cold sweat”???

31. Do existentialism and Descartes then point out that EVERYTHING you experience could be a dream??? And you have only seized upon a subset of your dreams that seems to have some consistency, and labelled them “reality”???

32. Do existentialism and Descartes point out that you can NOT prove that the subset of your dreams that you have labelled “reality” in fact exists??? And you may, in fact, be the only thing that exists??? And you will not know until you have “died”???!!!

33. BTW, were the wildly-popular “Matrix” movies starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne based on the real world NOT being real and another simultaneous totally-unimaginable world being real???

34. But, putting Hollywood aside, is it possible that all those things that the scientists have claimed to “know” in the subset of your dreams that you have labelled “reality” are merely a figment of your imagination???!!!

35. The same as everything else except you, which is the only thing according to existentialism and Descartes that you can be certain does exist?

36. Which is NOT to argue that you should NOT follow science in leading your life in the subset of your dreams that you have labelled “reality”!!! Come on, be fair you pseudo-intellectuals who always want to misrepresent a position and then treat the misrepresentation like a piñata!!!

37. So back to Steven Pinker – is he an atheist?

38. Isn’t atheism (the belief that there is no deity) ANTI-INTELLECTUAL because existentialist philosophers would say that THE ONLY INTELLECTUALLY-HONEST POSITION IS AGNOSTICISM (the belief that the existence of a deity can be NEITHER proved NOR disproved)?

39. So why does Steven Pinker think that the lack of “reason” that our nation is currently experiencing in the form of the LACK OF FREE SPEECH and the growing omnipresence of “cancel culture” does not mean that we are doomed?

40. And shouldn’t Steven Pinker welcome “The Fear of God” (aka “The Fear of Allah”) to support human beings in their “humanistic” quest to compel other human beings to “do good”?

41. And shouldn’t Steven Pinker also welcome the Hindu/Buddhist “Fear of Re-Incarnation” DOWN the animal chain rather than UP THE ANIMAL CHAIN TOWARD NIRVANA???

42. In other words, doesn’t “humanism” need all the help it can get???