Hi TOK List,

  I saw this 6 minute clip from Steven Pinker on his personal philosophy, which basically comes down to the concept of “reason”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-n0t2kk8w4

 

Keep in mind that in the ToK System, reason as Pinker uses it translates into “formal justification or formal epistemologies”. I like Pinker in many ways, but he is too entrenched in the old Enlightenment version of reality. And he does not fully appreciate the nature of the problem of psychology. He is a neuro-cognitive functionalist who thinks that is enough to understand “the mind,” but I disagree. But, I find him, along with other psychologists like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt, to be interesting to listen to and identify points of commonality and disagreement.

Best,

Gregg