Send me one idea for our first discussion of this first assignment in Pinker before 8 am Wed. As with other such assignments, it’s enough to send me a few words indicating a topic, but please include a specific page reference.

Pinker’s first chapter is much shorter than the other two we will be discussing, but it is likely to occupy much of our time on Wed. In it, Pinker outlines three views of people and their thinking that date back several centuries but that he thinks still have a strong hold on our thought. You should work to get a good sense of what these views are and look for signs of them in your thinking and the thinking of others.

In chapters 3 and 4, Pinker will suggest alternatives to the three views outlined in ch. 1. We won’t have time to consider all the ideas he presents in these chapters, so you should look for particular points of interest to you. Although I’ve assigned the whole of ch. 3 for Wed., we are unlikely to finish our discussion of it then. It is divided into his accounts of 4 “bridges” between biology and culture (pp. 30-41, 41-45, 45-51, 51-58). I’d encourage you to consider at least the first of them when looking for ideas for discussion on Wed., and the end of the second (i.e., p. 45) is about halfway through your total assignment in Pinker.