Cognitive Psychology Has Shown That The Mind

I Think This Confusion Leads Intellectuals And Artists Themselves To Believe That The Elite Arts And Humanities Are A Kind Of Higher, Exalted Form Of Human Endeavor.

The Supposedly Immaterial Soul, We Now Know, Can Be Bisected With A Knife, Altered By Chemicals, Started Or Stopped By Electricity, And Extinguished By A Sharp Blow Or By Insufficient Oxygen.

When It Comes To Explaining Human Thought And Behavior, The Possibility That Heredity Plays Any Role At All Still Has The Power To Shock. To Acknowledge Human Nature, Many Think, Is To Endorse Racism, Sexism, War, Greed, Genocide, Nihilism, Reactionary Politics, And Neglect Of Children And The Disadvantaged. Any Claim That The Mind Has An Innate Organization Strikes People Not As A Hypothesis That Might Be Incorrect But As A Thought It Is Immoral To Think.

We Can Shape Events In Each Other's Brains With Exquisite Precision.

Language Is A Window Into Human Nature, But It Is Also A Fistula, An Open Wound Through Which We're Exposed To An Infectious World.