The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it's an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in "I Hate Gates" Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
A Questionable Moral Instinct -- A response to Pinker
Steven Pinker's New York Times magazine piece on morality, The Moral Instinct, drips with disdain for cultural and historical traditions of morality in favor of an ominous sounding "science of moral sense." I read it front to back, slammed it shut and decided to call Natalie Carnes, a PhD student of theology and ethics at Duke and my in-house expert on matters of morality.
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