Conflicts with Pinker's Assumptions

Congratulations, citizen of the world! You’ll be pleased to know the world you live in has become remarkably less violent in the past 50-100 years AND on top of all that, it’s all thanks to YOU! You, and absolutely every other fellow human being currently living, are amazingly intelligent, exceedingly compassionate, and astonishingly advanced in your use of logic and reasoning. As a result of these impressive improvements beyond the traits of previous generations you’re responsible for making the world a safer, less violent place. Sound too good to be true? I think it’s a bit audacious myself, but according to a recent article and book by author Steven Pinker this is exactly what has been happening over the course of the past century. Pinker argues that contrary to popular notions, incidences of violence world-wide have been shockingly low compared to other periods in world history, and that this decline stems directly from our capacity for reason. As Pinker states, “the most important psychological contributor to the decline of violence over the long term may.. be reason.”¹

First, let’s examine the claim that violence is on the decline. Pinker claims, “there were far fewer deaths in war in the first decade of the twenty-first century than any of the five decades preceding it.”¹ He also makes additional (unsupported) claims that declines can be seen for homicide, execution, and other general violent causes of death. As an exhaustive review of the history of violence is beyond the scope of this piece, I will instead offer one possibility that may, in part, contribute to the decline of violent deaths: advances in medical care. Medical professionals providing soldiers care during World War I were woefully ill equipped. Antibiotics were not even available yet and the death toll was staggering. In total, 116,708 American servicemen died during the war. Only 53,513 of those men were killed in battle.² The rest likely perished as a result of complications from injuries or disease. By World War II, care-givers were armed with superior surgical techniques, medications and equipment. Military medics saw that given respite from combat, regular food and a clean environment around 85-90 percent of their patients could again become efficient soldiers.³ Jumping ahead to the modern era, it is entirely plausible that decreases in violent deaths could be partially attributed to excellent medical care. While a stab wound in the gut may have been universally fatal several hundred years ago, in the westernized world the likelihood of surviving this injury is quite high. Pinker does not make any effort to define violence, but merely suggests that the rate of deaths is much lower. It may be entirely possible that the amount of violence is no different than in previous centuries, and the number of deaths resulting from violence may be lower as a result of improved survival rates.

Pinker supposes that the decline in violent deaths is not attributable to any external factors but rather an enhancement of human reasoning. A bulk of his argument rests upon research conducted in the 1980’s by Dr. James Flynn into what was eventually named “the Flynn Effect”. Pinker explains that Flynn, “scoured the world for test scores, and the result was the same in every sample: IQ score had increased throughout the twentieth century.”¹ He adds that the increase is not in general intelligence but rather in abstract reasoning and analogies. This summary of Dr. Flynn’s work is hardly accurate. First, Pinker makes it sound as though Flynn examined test scores from all over the world, in hundreds of countries. This is hardly the case. In fact, Flynn solicited test scores and research findings from researchers in 35 countries, all of which are part of westernized society.⁴ Additionally, Pinker insinuates that the assumed increase in intelligence has directly caused an increase in reasoning. Reasoners, he states, care about their own well-being and act, “as a part of a community of reasoners who can impinge on their well-being and who can comprehend each other’s reasoning”.¹ While this opinion cannot be empirically refuted, it is an interesting contrast to quote from Dr. Flynn’s pivotal paper:

“… psychologists should stop saying that IQ tests measure intelligence. They should say that IQ tests measure abstract-problem solving ability (APSA), a term that accurately conveys our ignorance. We know people solve problems on IQ tests; we suspect those problems are so detached, or so abstracted from reality, that the ability to solve them can diverge over time from the real-world problem solving ability called intelligence; thus far we know little else.”⁴

This directly conflicts with Pinker’s assumption that increasing scores on IQ tests directly correlates to some measure of intelligence and therefore ability to reason within the real world. It is fair to assume that regardless of the veracity of Pinker’s claims regarding decreases in violence, it takes far more than clever prose and leaps of logic to prove reason is the root of this phenomena.

--Kara Kittelberger

Neuroscience Graduate Program 

References

1. Pinker, S. “Taming the devil within us” (2011). Nature. 478: 309-311.

2. Norris, M. Medicine and Duty: The World War I Memoir of Captain Harold W. Mcgill, Medical Officer 31^st Battalion C.E.F. University of Calgary Press (May 15, 2007)

3. Herman, J. Battle Station Sick Bay: Navy Medicine in World War II Naval Institute Press; 1^st edition (March 1997)

4. Flynn, J. Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure. (1987). Psychological Bulletin. 101(2):171-191.

Pinker's Wishful Thinking

Steven Pinker’s particular brand of wishful thinking reeks of pandering at best, ivory tower blindness at worst. In citing a few convenient “statistics” (evoking the term liberally), sprinkled with a few self-serving platitudes, Pinker deftly paints a caricature of reality and history that converges to his thesis. To say that Pinker isn’t an entertaining artist would be disingenuous.





It simply makes sense: reasonable people would be much more interested in working together for the common good. Intelligent beings seek to further their intelligence, an effort that necessitates a peaceful landscape and rocking chair. A rise in educated citizenry should necessarily see a corresponding rise in peace metrics. However, the bits of evidence brought forth to support his argument, come severely under-armed. It’s almost difficult to directly address the points made in “Taming the devil within us” due to the nature of most of his arguments: appeals to narcissism.



His self-congratulatory reasoning comes in the form of highlighting our era’s relative lack of violence. Ignoring the severity of conflicts in Africa, North Korea and Asia, it’s easy to agree with his points. Unfortunately, the presence of such violence, and in many cases to a magnitude never seen before, highlights a major issue in Pinker’s argument. The idea that a globally intelligent community results in a universally improved society is optimistic and selective bias. While studies on the individual level demonstrate a lowered risk of psychopathological behavior with increasing intelligence, the ability to scale this up to a generalized concept comes with a plethora of tenuous assumptions.



What we see, instead, is an intelligent community off-setting the fruits of its labor (from destructive technologies, amongst others) onto regions it deems useless/remote/inconsequential. Far from empathy, this highlights the worst in the intelligent community: complacency. By displacing consequences onto distant communities, it renders responsibility a nebulous and remote concept. It simply isn’t our problem, and we congratulate ourselves on our enlightenment while people die from our economic money-crops.



Further, casting aside the historically supported idea of “ebbs and crests” further bolsters his convenient thesis. Pinker’s “two-points” approach to linear regression results in a one-dimensional mirage. In referencing homicide rates in Europe, he embodies the “cherry-picking” scientist paradigm. Violence in Africa has, in contrast to Europe, been exacerbated by the advance of western civilization. Violence exports have become so lucrative that entire economies rely on the killing market. Intelligence is harnessed to develop the latest and greatest technologies, while these technologies are employed in a manner divorced from ethics. How this is reconciled within Pinker’s rosy thesis is still murky.



Shifting gears:



In accepting his conclusion, what role would neuroscientists have within the ethical landscape of reducing violence? If we see a correlation (or, as Pinker posits, a causation) between intelligence and reduced violence, do we not have a duty to go beyond education and intercept intelligence at the physical substrate? Cognitive interventions that improve intelligence are no longer luxuries; they are necessities to prevent murders. Do we have an obligation to install empathy and upgrade the obviously under-developed compassion that evolution has burdened us with?



The inevitable hiccups/hurdles aside, intervening in such a complex system as human interaction comes with a hefty set of risks. How can improving intelligence (and subsequently affecting empathy) go awry? Perhaps complacency enters the picture. Intelligent people enter the market of money-making in a very advantageous position. Consumerism further provides an enticing existence, ensuring that intelligence is tied to status-quo. Ultimately, intelligence could merely correlate with lowered violence; the direct relationship is between economics and violence. There simply isn’t much money in fighting each other; there’s a lot more money in making other people fight each other. Pinker conflates this idea with a global “peace” trend. In improving intelligence, we may merely be improving the efficiency of coupling between intelligence and the maintenance of economic power structures. Ethically, is it our job as neuroscientists and neuroengineers to facilitate more compliant, less disruptive intelligence?



Violence, despite its gruesome face, comes with selection pressures and survival constraints that bring out the best in our ingenuity, our sense of community. By fragmenting society, we strengthen the intra-fragment bonds. This strengthened community then goes on to work wonders, developing, in the name of security, the technologies and scientific discoveries that drive inquiry for generations to come. Without the pressure provided with violence, would we still have the ability to advance intelligence? Instead of seeing intelligence as antithetical to violence, we should acknowledge the reality: they come synergistically. As neuroscientists, can we say it is our duty to improve the longevity of life (reduce violence) at the cost of the quality (scientific inquiry)?



The conclusions drawn by Pinker rely heavily on a wishful-thinking argument, a “wouldn’t the world be nice if this were true, let’s act like it is” attitude that, while commendable, does not belong in the realm of scientific inquiry. Rather, the faith that he so desires to elicit comes at a severe cost that should make any objective mind squirm.



--Vineet Tiruvadi



Neuroscience Graduate Program





Sources:



Chivers, C.J. (2009, May 19) “Arms Sent by U.S. May Be Falling Into Taliban Hands.” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/world/asia/20ammo.html?pagewanted=all



“UN officials say Darfur conflict is worsening.” (2008, April 23). New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/africa/23iht-darfur.1.12258799.html



Holland, Terrill R.; Beckett, Gerald E.; Levi, Mario. Intelligence, personality, and criminal violence: A multivariate analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol 49(1), Feb 1981, 106-111. doi:10.1037/0022-006X.49.1.106



Hartman, E. Alan, et al. “The Effect of Power Structures on the Propensity to Initiate Conflict in a Triad.” Midwestern Psychological Association Convention in Detroit, Michigan, May 6-8, 1971



Illes, J., Bird, S. “Neuroethics: a modern context for ethics in neuroscience.” Trends in Neuroscience, 2006.

The Rise of Nonviolence

            World War I. The Holocaust. The Partition of India. The Khmer Rouge. Rwanda. Darfur. Each is a twentieth century event in which at least 500,000 people were killed based on their race, ethnicity, ideology, or religion. Now what if someone told you that despite these recent atrocities, our world is becoming increasingly nonviolent? That the incidence of major war, homicide, rape, abuse, and intolerance have all precipitously declined since the Middle Ages, and especially within the past 50 years? You might meet that argument with some skepticism. In his latest book, The Better Angles of Our Nature¹, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argues exactly that. Pinker illustrates that historical criminology data overwhelmingly indicate the modern world is far less violent than we conventionally realize. According to Pinker, this is a result of our “better angels” of self-control, empathy, morality, and reasoning, triumphing over our “inner demons,” for four reasons: 1) the Leviathan; 2) gentle commerce; 3) the expanding circle; and 4) the escalator of reason.

 The Leviathan

An idea originally put forth by Thomas Hobbes, the Leviathan² entails a social contract between the state and the individual in which authority and criminal justice are given over to the sovereign state. Within this contract, subjects no longer have the power to exercise civil or criminal law alone. Sociologist Norbert Elias, in The Civilizing Process, suggested that the rise of modern, centralized governments accelerated European standards regarding violence and self-control. Pinker uses these widely accepted theories to justify his claim that the emergence of nation-states has reduced the individual’s freedom to exercise vengeance and violence without consequence, and that because of this, lynch mobs, pogroms, execution for victimless crimes, rape, spousal abuse, and slavery have been diminishing worldwide.

Gentle Commerce

In Kant’s Perpetual Peace, he asserts that popular governments are best inclined to promote peace and commerce. Robert Wright has argued that our increasingly global economic infrastructure has shifted modern policies away from “zero-sum” plunder, and towards “positive-sum” trade³. In this process, members of one’s “out-group” gain a certain level of economic utility, rendering them more valuable alive than dead. Pinker cites these economic forces as another substrate through which our better angels have thrived in modern times.

The Expanding Circle

Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man argued that evolution has bestowed an innate sense of empathy in humans, a quality now known to exist in non-human primates and other mammals. Steven Pinker argues that the rise of cosmopolitanism, namely our exposure to other cultures and ideologies through history, media, journalism, and travel, has pushed forward our ability to empathize with others, slowly expanding our circle of care and consideration for others’ needs.

The Escalator of Reason

Pinker claims that the rise of literacy has enabled people to expand their ability to empathically relate to individuals outside their “in-group.” For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin facilitated a growing awareness of the plight of African American slaves among antediluvian whites through an imaginative, reasoning process made possible through storytelling and the written word. This invariably contributed to the movement to abolish slavery and consequently the United States Civil War. Experimental evidence has also shown that reading a person’s words increases one’s empathy for both that person and the group that person represents⁴.

I would argue that Pinker’s ambitious synthesis of modern trends in nonviolence and tolerance with the rise of reason, literacy, cosmopolitanism, and democratic nations is compelling, but fails to consider a handful of subtleties, including the distribution of crime and its reporting, the rise in unconventional forms of violence, and the discontents of globalization.

Distribution and Reporting

Pinker’s data are largely limited to countries in Western Europe and North America, which comprise only 15% of the worldwide population. While it is true that all countries have now banned slavery, humanitarian violations remain in the developing world, such as ethnic cleansing, religious warfare, and terrorism. When averaged together, global data may indicate increased humanitarianism, but perhaps crime is now distributed among countries more unevenly than before and/or poorly documented in developing nations. In fact, differences in the law and in crime reporting, both by victims and judicial forces, are well-established complications in cross-country comparisons⁵. For example, social norms may prevent women from reporting cases of rape or sexual abuse, making an obvious impact on any attempt to report crime levels accurately.

Slow Violence

Violence is not limited to corporeal acts of brutality. Would you consider dumping toxic waste on your neighbor’s property an act of violence? As economic affluence expands worldwide, so does consumer-generated waste. Until our infrastructure develops tools to deal with our toxic waste, the West will continue to export plastics, heavy metals, and non-biodegradable trash to poorer countries unequipped to deal with their health hazards. The demand for consumer goods has also driven deforestation, environmentally damaging resource extraction, and the exploitation of native peoples for use of their natural resources and land. These actions may not immediately lead to death, but as Rob Nixon argues⁶, they can be considered new innovations in exacting insidious, but slowly emerging violence against others.

Globalization and its Discontents

Pinker uses the concept of “gentle commerce” to support his idea that two nations or individuals engaged in trade are less likely to fight against one another. Nevertheless, wars repeatedly break out between nations involved in active trade, and often motivates the conflict itself. Historically, many military engagements have been prompted by resource conflicts, such as those over surface water, food supplies, minerals, and other natural products. Increasing the number of countries that a sovereign nation depends on for its livelihood may actually accentuate the possible sources for war than mitigate them when access to the resources therein becomes threatened⁷.

Conclusions

In light of the aforementioned limitations, we must approach Pinker’s argument with a healthy degree of skepticism. While the evidence does seem to support decreasing homicide rates in Western nations over the past five hundred years, it is important to not generalize this trend worldwide, nor to assume that we have completely elucidated the mechanisms for this decline. Recall that correlation is not causation. Most importantly, we Westerners must not take Pinker’s theory as a cause for celebration or for resting on our laurels. Genocide, war, and humanitarian violations still take place everyday in this world, and it is our responsibility as denizens of democratic nations to actively eradicate them, even outside of our own country.

--Jordan Kohn

Neuroscience Graduate Program

Sources and Additional Reading

¹ Pinker, S. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking, 2011. Print.

²Hobbes, T. Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Print.

³Wright, R. Nonzero: The logic of human destiny. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print.

⁴Batson, C. D., Early, S., & Salvarini, G. Perspective taking: imagining how another feels versus imagining how you would feel. Personality & Social Personality Bulletin. 2007. 23:751-758.

⁵Shaw, M., van Dijk, J., & Rhomberg, W. Determining trends in global crime and justice: An overview of results from the United Nations surveys of crime trends and operations of criminal justice systems. Forum on Crime and Society. 2003. 3: 35-63.

⁶Nixon, R. Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Cambridge: Harvard, 2011. Print.

⁷Le Billon, P. The political ecology of war: natural resources and armed conflicts. Political Geography. 2001. 20: 561-584.

Pinker: A Correlation Between Ability to Reason and Levels of Violence?

Violence, as Pinker suggests in his article “Taming the devil within us,” is something that has percolated through the eons of mankind when one considers what it is to be human. But—what exactly is violence? When one takes a closer look at what it means to be violent, one will encounter varying definitions even within a given culture. For instance, while some people love to hunt and animal research is ubiquitous in scientific research, there are those that abhor such things and find them extremely violent. Moving between cultures exponentially confounds the issue, as in many cultures it is perfectly acceptable and common practice to beat your spouse—something which those of us in the United States would find quite alarming and violent.

Reason—the ability to employ rational thought in evaluative decision making, Pinker suggests, is responsible for the decrease in violence seen in human culture over time when compared to ancient Rome, for instance. While reason, in and of itself, is important if it is only a vehicle of action. In other words: the reasoner wants what the reasoner gets. This is perfectly evident in such cases as the fatal shootings in Norway this past summer of 2011. Norway, normally one of the most peaceful cultures in the world, still fostered this mass murderer who—quite rationally—took it upon himself to engage in a violent shooting spree. Thus, is it really an increase in our innate capacity to reason that is leading to the decrease in violence Pinker suggests, or could it instead be a more commonplace, peaceful managing of our reason guided by something such as empathy as Pinker also hints at?

During the course of his article he attempts to make the assertion that violence has decreased quantitatively during the course of our growth as humans, yet he offers up no working definition as to what constitutes violence. This is quite problematic, as he cannot effectively make the quantitative argument that he attempts. Not only is this lack of a working definition problematic, but the assumptions that violence is a bad thing carries great ethical implications. There are those whole would consider lethal injection for murderers, killing animals for food, going to war with those who have wronged their nation, and corporal punishment for family and as a means of education all as good things. On the other hand, a great deal of people would find these same things terrible. Thus, how do we separate “good” violence from “bad” violence and how does this differ among cultures? Pinker would do well to address these issues to better determine quantitatively exactly how much violence is at play and since eradicating all forms of violence may not be a good thing.

Subsequently, Pinker then goes on to suggest that increased reason is responsible for the observed decline in violence that accompanies human development throughout history. In my opinion, this argument is an ethically-flawed one. In making the sweeping claim that reason is the main driving force at play behind this reduction in violence, he relies heavily upon IQ scores to define abstract reasoning as the same across cultures. This doesn’t seem like it can ethically be done, as performance on an IQ test may very well fluctuate as a function of culture, irrespective of the intrinsic ability of individuals of that given culture to reason. Furthermore, what about cultures where illiteracy is rampant or those cultures are not amenable to being assessed with an IQ test? Does this mean those cultures are automatically less-rational? Thus, a more objective assessment of reason needs to be employed on a wider basis to better capture the innate ability to reason across cultures. Only then can a more ethical and truly quantitative argument be put forth as to the impact of reason on properly-defined violence.

The role of the neuroscientist in decreasing violence is several-fold, but largely distills down to the essence of 1) promoting a society in which rational thinking is encouraged and which we can all understand one another’s reasoning (as Pinker suggests) and 2) helping to better define violence such that it might be more appropriately quantitated. In service of the first point, I return to the concept that reason is only a vehicle and the reasoner wants what the reasoner gets. Here, the neuroscientist needs to take a more active approach in being the outspoken voice of reason and helping to lead society by example. We need to proactively encourage people to engage in critical thinking and, importantly, work on communicating this critical thinking effectively and openly with one another. Pinker refers to a “collective rationality” that has been “honed over the ages [to]…clamp down on short-sighted and hot-blooded impulses towards violence, and force us to treat a greater number of agents as we would have them treat us.” I believe he is spot-on with this assertation, however he is a bit misguided in what he refers to as “collective rationality.” This collective rationality is taken to be globally-representative when, in reality, I believe it is more appropriately culturally-specific. By more proactively engaging society in a common process of critical thinking, we as neuroscientists can help shift the culturally-specific “collective rationality” to a truly globablly-representative collective rationality.

Secondly, we as neuroscientists can work to come up with better, more objective measures of rationality to help supplant IQ tests. As pinker points out, the brain circuitry behind abstract reasoning and decision-making is becoming increasingly well-illuminated, so why not capitalize on this? More objective assessments of reasoning ability should be designed and intentionally employed across as many cultures as possible in order to truly capture our ability as a species to reason. Only then can correlations be appropriately drawn between the ability to reason and levels of (more precisely-defined) violence.

--Evan Lebois

Neuroscience Graduate Program

References

Pinker, S. Taming the devil within us. (2011). Nature. 478: 309.

Flaws in Pinker's Argument

              

In his article “Taming the devil within us,” Steven Pinker argues that violence in modern society has decreased over time. He states that there are three main factors propelling this change, empathy, morality, and most importantly, reason.

              Pinker begins this discussion by proposing “evidence” to support his claim that violence has decreased over time, especially in the recent years after World War II. He provides anecdotal evidence to support his claims, while never exploring actual statistical numbers or experimental evidence. For example, Pinker states that “If you added up all the homicides…the casualties of religious and revolutionary wars, the people executed for victimless crimes…and… genocides…they would surely outnumber the fatalities from amoral predation and conquest.” When considering the potential causes behind a behavioral phenomena, one must agree that the phenomena exists to begin with. I do not necessarily disagree with Pinker in his assumptions, but I do not see any substantial evidence to indicate that violence is actually decreasing in human society.

         In order to investigate this theory, a systematic review of the history of violence would need to be conducted. This study would necessitate not only the number of times an act of violence occurred at a particular time in human history, but what precipitated the act (for example what the social pressures/circumstances were) in addition to the severity of pain inflicted. Moreover, Pinker never clarifies exactly what he means by the use of the term “violence”. In the general sense of the term, many incidences of “violence” could be included that have risen in the last 50 years, such as weapons being brought onto school campuses (1). Additionally, Pinker never clarifies whether he is referring to violence in adults, children, or even people with physical or psychiatric disorders. In order to examine why there has been a decline in human violence over the course of our existence, one must have to provide evidence to support that this phenomenon is actually occurring in the first place.

            After this proposal, Pinker states that this decline has occurred because people are more actively inhibiting their violent tendencies. This inhibition comes about through the increase of empathy, morality, and also reason. To be honest I don’t even know where to begin when addressing the problems I have with these arguments! I am not saying that they have no validity whatsoever, but again, Pinker does not provide any conclusive evidence to support his ideas.

              Pinker puts the most emphasis on the third explanation, reason, so that is where I will focus. Specifically, Pinker posits that reasoning people will abstain from violence in order to maintain their own well being. History has shown that people will also engage in violent behavior in order to maintain their own well being. Societies, including countries, will risk and sacrifice the lives of their soldiers in order to prevent “worse” violence and/or violence in their home countries, a prime example for which is the most recent Iraq war. “Reasoning” people will also partake in violent activities based on other motivating factors, including social pressure. A social experiment conducted in a high school in 1967 turned normal sophmore students into “aggressive zealots” in only about one week’s time (2). This experiment was conducted in order to better illustrate to students why and how German citizens sided with Nazis in the second World War. Another example of social pressure’s effect on “reasoning” people were the Milgram experiments which showed that individuals will inflict pain on others simply because an authority figure told them to do so (3).

             Pinker provides a very simplistic approach, which needs to be subjected to much more scrutiny and detail than what is provided in this article in order for his argument to be taken more seriously. 

 

--Jodi Godfrey

Neuroscience Graduate Program

Citations

1.) http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/youthviolence/schoolviolence/

2.) The Third Wave, Ron Jones http://libcom.org/history/the-third-wave-1967-account-ron-jones

3.) Behavioral Study of obedience. Milgram, Stanley The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol 67(4), Oct 1963, 371-378. doi: 10.1037/h0040525