Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Family Values 493express anger towards women), rape would not be as evil. Rape is evil;therefore the claim that men rape for sex cannot be correct. More generally,what people instinctively like is good, so if people like beauty, beautywould be a sign of worth. Beauty is not a sign of worth, so the claim thatpeople like beauty cannot be correct.These kinds of arguments combine bad biology (nature is nice), badpsychology (the mind is created by society), and bad ethics (what peoplelike is good). Feminism would lose nothing by giving them up.RIVALSPeople everywhere strive for a ghostly substance called authority, cachet,dignity, dominance, eminence, esteem, face, position, preeminence,prestige, rank, regard, repute, respect, standing, stature, or status. Peoplego hungry, risk their lives, and exhaust their wealth in pursuit of bits ofribbon and metal. The economist Thorstein Veblen noticed that peoplesacrificed so many necessities of life to impress one another that theyappear to be responding to a "higher, spiritual need." Status and virtueare close in people's minds, as we see in words like chivalrous, classy,courtly, gentlemanly, honorable, noble, and princely, and their oppositesill-bred, low-class, low-rent, mean, nasty, rude, shabby, and shoddy. Whenit comes to the trifles of personal appearance, we express our admirationfor the tasteful using ethical metaphors such as right, good, correct, andfaultless, and censure the tacky with tones usually reserved for sin—anattitude that the art historian Quentin Bell dubbed "sartorial morality."Is this any way to build an intelligent organism? Where do these powerfulmotives come from?Many animals are moved by pointless decorations and rituals, and theselective causes are no longer mysterious. Here is the key idea. Creaturesdiffer in their ability to hurt and help others. Some are stronger orfiercer or more poisonous; some have better genes or more largesse.These potent creatures want everyone to know they are potent, and thecreatures they can impinge on also want to know which ones are potent.But it is impossible for every creature to probe every other one's DNA,muscle mass, biochemical composition, ferocity, and so on. So the consequentialcreatures advertise their worth with a signal. Unfortunately,the inconsequential creatures can counterfeit the signal and reap the