Tag: evolutionary psychology

• Adam Gopnik vs. Jonathan Gotschall on Stories

  6 days ago

  Will Wilkinson in The Moral Sciences Club

  As I've written before, I'm a skeptical of claims, like Jonathan Gottschall's, about the power of stories to make us better people. Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker is skeptical too. Gopnik argues that Gotschall's more central claim—that stories increase our empathy, and “make societies work ... Read More

• Steven Pinker on Reason and the Decline of Violence

  7 months ago

  Will Wilkinson in The Moral Sciences Club

  Quibbles about measurement aside, I agree with Steven Pinker that humans have become astoundingly more peaceful over the past several centuries. What I found unsatisfactory about Better Angels of Our Nature is precisely the rationalist element of Pinker's explanation for the decline of violence ... Read More