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The critiques of Pinker that I've found most convincing have focused on his presentation of the Enlightenment's intellectual side. The review by John Gray that

The critiques of Pinker that I've found most convincing have focused on his presentation of the Enlightenment's intellectual side. The review by John Gray that Aaronson dismisses has some fairly convincing points, and it's disappointing seeing him travesty Gray's case. It should be pretty obvious to someone with reasonably good reading comprehension that Gray is not saying, as Aaronson suggests he is, that Pinker supports eugenics. Gray's point is that the thinkers who Aaronson presents as defining "Enlightenment values" in fact had much more ambivalent positions. The argument is that one cannot define "Enlightenment values" simplistically--because the Enlightenment thinkers were in disagreement about basic principles. I don't agree with all of Gray's critique--I think Pinker's case that things have improved over the last several centuries is reasonable--but I think this part of his argument is difficult to answer. It's very easy to define praiseworthy "values" if you keep them divorced from real-world arguments, and that seems to be Pinker's approach. Any thinker who can present Enlightenment values as simple and univocal is going to do a poor job understanding things as they are today. Deny the disagreements of the past, and you're sure to miss the substance of today's disagreements. Aaronson is happy to take the "classic liberal" label. I wonder if he's familiar with the work of others who identify as classic liberals right now; my guess, given what I've seen of his writing, is that he'd disagree with many of them pretty strenuously.

csallen 9y ago
Did Pinker ever say in his book that every Enlightenment thinker shared the same exact set of values about which there was no disagreement? I seem to recall him saying the opposite at times. The point of the book was not to praise the thinkers of 2-300 years ago, but to identify a subset of the values that really picked up steam around that time and to show how they have contributed to significant progress since. (EDIT: clarity)
- maldusiecle 9y ago
  Of course he didn't say that literally every Enlightenment thinker shared the exact set of values. Neither I nor Gray are claiming that. But his argument, as I understand it, is that there are a certain determinate set of "Enlightenment values" that these thinkers mostly shared, that Pinker himself shares, and that society as a whole needs to share in order to make progress, stay civilized, etc. Gray's point is that no such set of values exists, that Enlightenment thinkers were always in contradiction with each other, and that people who claim to hew to "Enlightenment values" today are likely to be in fundamental disagreement with each other.
  - csallen 9y ago
    The way I read it, Pinker wasn't adamant about these values being determinate and shared. Quite the opposite, he was aware that there was disagreement and that things were messy. From the first chapter of the book: > What is the Enlightenment? There is no official answer, because the era named by Kant’s essay was never demarcated by opening and closing ceremonies like the Olympics, nor are its tenets stipulated in an oath or creed… The era was a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but four themes tie them together: reason, science, humanism and progress. In other words, the themes are of Pinker's own determining, with the benefit of hindsight. More importantly, this is not a book about the history of the Enlightenment. Out of the many thousands of paragraphs in this book, Pinker only devotes a small handful to discussing the source of the values/themes he defends. I don't think it's accurate to refer to their origin as the argument Pinker makes in the book. It would be more accurate to say that this is merely one supplemental point he makes in the book, and that it's largely irrelevant to his central thesis.
    - zasz 9y ago
      The thing is, how can you trust Pinker's interpretation of the Enlightenment? Pinker thinks the Enlightenment was an important engine of 'progress,' but John Locke was a tremendously influential Enlightenment thinker who argued in defense of slavery, who owned shares in a slave-trading company. (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0090591713485446?journalCode=ptxa http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0090591713485446...) Locke was also responsible for many of the ideas surrounding natural rights that are now enshrined in the American Constitution, but from the perspective of an African slave, Locke was not progressive. Thomas Hobbes was even more illiberal than Locke. He didn't even believe in natural rights at all, and he would have hated democracy. Pinker's getting a lot wrong that he can't cover for just by making a token nod to the vagueness of exactly when the Enlightenment started. His poor understanding of what the Enlightenment was, who was in it, and what they actually believed means that whatever story he tells of human progress is going to be fundamentally flawed.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
jedharris 9y ago
Gray in his review doesn't establish that enlightenment thinkers had no common values. He only points out that some of them had wrong conclusions. The leap from that to implying that they lacked any common values is entirely illegitimate. I have looked at both Gray and Pinker but have not read this book or any of Gray's. If Pinker doesn't articulate historically defensible core enlightenment values, that is a valid criticism, but doesn't deeply undermine his thesis. I'd very much like to see a sympathetic exploration of the question "What exactly are enlightenment values?" That is a potentially deep question in the history of ideas but not the one Pinker was trying to answer. I don't think Gray is a trustworthy guide in exploring that question -- way too tendentious.
- maldusiecle 9y ago
  I don't disagree that Gray is tendentious, but I really can't reconcile your first paragraph with what I read in his essay. Among other things, Gray points out that Voltaire and Bentham advocated "enlightened despotism." If that's not a difference of values, what is?
twblalock 9y ago
This review is also very good: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2018/02/20/enlightenment-and-progress-or-why-steven-pinker-is-wrong https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2018/02/20/enlighte...
dmix 9y ago
> I wonder if he's familiar with the work of others who identify as classic liberals right now; my guess, given what I've seen of his writing, is that he'd disagree with many of them pretty strenuously. That's a silly reason to distance yourself from a legitimate ideology. A few newcomers cherry picking parts, bastardizing it, or misusing it should not be reason to abandon it. Especially if it's fundamentally sound. For example, if Hitler adopted x socialist or capitalist policy that shouldn't be a reason to dismiss it simply because he held other awful views/ideologies. It should only be dismissed on the grounds that it directly contributed to something bad and had y outcome. Dismissing ideas merely because some bad people happen to have embraced it as part of their wider ideology is anti-intellectual. Not only that, but considering the above he shouldn't even have to defend claiming himself 'classically liberal' either, as it should be apparent to any unbiased mind what it is and what it isn't. The only ones who seek to blur that distinction tend to be politically motivated...
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
>Any thinker who can present Enlightenment values as simple and univocal is going to do a poor job understanding things as they are today. Deny the disagreements of the past, and you're sure to miss the substance of today's disagreements. I think it would be reasonable to say that there were disagreements within the Enlightenment, but that they were generally smaller than the disagreements between Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment, for instance, Locke versus Rousseau would be a smaller disagreement than either versus Nietzsche.

csallen 9y ago

Did Pinker ever say in his book that every Enlightenment thinker shared the same exact set of values about which there was no disagreement? I seem to recall him saying the opposite at times. The point of the book was not to praise the thinkers of 2-300 years ago, but to identify a subset of the values that really picked up steam around that time and to show how they have contributed to significant progress since. (EDIT: clarity)

maldusiecle 9y ago
Of course he didn't say that literally every Enlightenment thinker shared the exact set of values. Neither I nor Gray are claiming that. But his argument, as I understand it, is that there are a certain determinate set of "Enlightenment values" that these thinkers mostly shared, that Pinker himself shares, and that society as a whole needs to share in order to make progress, stay civilized, etc. Gray's point is that no such set of values exists, that Enlightenment thinkers were always in contradiction with each other, and that people who claim to hew to "Enlightenment values" today are likely to be in fundamental disagreement with each other.
- csallen 9y ago
  The way I read it, Pinker wasn't adamant about these values being determinate and shared. Quite the opposite, he was aware that there was disagreement and that things were messy. From the first chapter of the book: > What is the Enlightenment? There is no official answer, because the era named by Kant’s essay was never demarcated by opening and closing ceremonies like the Olympics, nor are its tenets stipulated in an oath or creed… The era was a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but four themes tie them together: reason, science, humanism and progress. In other words, the themes are of Pinker's own determining, with the benefit of hindsight. More importantly, this is not a book about the history of the Enlightenment. Out of the many thousands of paragraphs in this book, Pinker only devotes a small handful to discussing the source of the values/themes he defends. I don't think it's accurate to refer to their origin as the argument Pinker makes in the book. It would be more accurate to say that this is merely one supplemental point he makes in the book, and that it's largely irrelevant to his central thesis.
  - zasz 9y ago
    The thing is, how can you trust Pinker's interpretation of the Enlightenment? Pinker thinks the Enlightenment was an important engine of 'progress,' but John Locke was a tremendously influential Enlightenment thinker who argued in defense of slavery, who owned shares in a slave-trading company. (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0090591713485446?journalCode=ptxa http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0090591713485446...) Locke was also responsible for many of the ideas surrounding natural rights that are now enshrined in the American Constitution, but from the perspective of an African slave, Locke was not progressive. Thomas Hobbes was even more illiberal than Locke. He didn't even believe in natural rights at all, and he would have hated democracy. Pinker's getting a lot wrong that he can't cover for just by making a token nod to the vagueness of exactly when the Enlightenment started. His poor understanding of what the Enlightenment was, who was in it, and what they actually believed means that whatever story he tells of human progress is going to be fundamentally flawed.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

jedharris 9y ago

Gray in his review doesn't establish that enlightenment thinkers had no common values. He only points out that some of them had wrong conclusions. The leap from that to implying that they lacked any common values is entirely illegitimate. I have looked at both Gray and Pinker but have not read this book or any of Gray's. If Pinker doesn't articulate historically defensible core enlightenment values, that is a valid criticism, but doesn't deeply undermine his thesis. I'd very much like to see a sympathetic exploration of the question "What exactly are enlightenment values?" That is a potentially deep question in the history of ideas but not the one Pinker was trying to answer. I don't think Gray is a trustworthy guide in exploring that question -- way too tendentious.

maldusiecle 9y ago
I don't disagree that Gray is tendentious, but I really can't reconcile your first paragraph with what I read in his essay. Among other things, Gray points out that Voltaire and Bentham advocated "enlightened despotism." If that's not a difference of values, what is?

twblalock 9y ago

This review is also very good: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2018/02/20/enlightenment-and-progress-or-why-steven-pinker-is-wrong https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2018/02/20/enlighte...

dmix 9y ago

> I wonder if he's familiar with the work of others who identify as classic liberals right now; my guess, given what I've seen of his writing, is that he'd disagree with many of them pretty strenuously. That's a silly reason to distance yourself from a legitimate ideology. A few newcomers cherry picking parts, bastardizing it, or misusing it should not be reason to abandon it. Especially if it's fundamentally sound. For example, if Hitler adopted x socialist or capitalist policy that shouldn't be a reason to dismiss it simply because he held other awful views/ideologies. It should only be dismissed on the grounds that it directly contributed to something bad and had y outcome. Dismissing ideas merely because some bad people happen to have embraced it as part of their wider ideology is anti-intellectual. Not only that, but considering the above he shouldn't even have to defend claiming himself 'classically liberal' either, as it should be apparent to any unbiased mind what it is and what it isn't. The only ones who seek to blur that distinction tend to be politically motivated...

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

>Any thinker who can present Enlightenment values as simple and univocal is going to do a poor job understanding things as they are today. Deny the disagreements of the past, and you're sure to miss the substance of today's disagreements. I think it would be reasonable to say that there were disagreements within the Enlightenment, but that they were generally smaller than the disagreements between Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment, for instance, Locke versus Rousseau would be a smaller disagreement than either versus Nietzsche.