You know it makes sense

Rationality: what it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters

by Steven Pinker (Allen Lane, 2021)

A logical argument in favour of logic?

Cover of the Penguin edition — Sorry, Penguin, but that it a boring cover!

Pinker often writes with such clarity and energy that ones can be swept up in the flow and not stand back to say “hand on a minute! It’s not as simple as all that”. He plays with the arguments in favour of logic (which of course are using the very reasoning one is trying to defend). But then again, what objections can there be? Even the whackiest of whacky crackpot conspiracy theories (take your pick!) present their cherry-picked delusional nonsense as if it’s evidence. Footnotes ‘n’ all! But whatever one wants (unless it’s an anarchic dreamworld) reason and logic are the best way to get it.

Anti-scientific voices might lament that cold logic cannot account for love, kindness, art galleries and Battersea Dogs Home, but actually these things all serve sensible understandable ends when reason is applied to our morals and emotional needs. The author opens up the subject with ample illustration from psychological experiments that explore peoples’ values through putting costs on short and long-term goals and scrutinising the moral “rules” by which we live. There’s no simple reductionism in Pinker’s approach to advocating rationality.

Categorical thinking has dogged Western thought since Aristotle. We are still addicted to hard boundaries and binary polarities. When these are applied to identity and political thinking the result (look anywhere in the world right now!) is disastrous confrontation. But this is not the only rational way to think about the world, resemblances and contrasts. Patterned thinking and relationships are much more nuanced than abstract logic gates. On or off, true or false.

That is illogical, Captain

In the section on probabilities and Bayesian logic (i. e. reasoning which accounts for prior probabilities) the author covers a lot of ground familiar to anyone who has read popular psychology books in recent years: availability heuristics and base-rate neglect being just two examples that underpin unintended bias (see Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow). Similarly, the elements of risk and reward and costs versus benefits touches on the now-familiar examples of Game Theory and counter-intuitive decision making.

I found no fault in the discussions around correlation and causation, and situations in which popular mythology spills over into disinformation. But it felt like reheated leftovers. There are too many books that have already covered the same ground at least as clearly and with more original examples.

What the hell is wrong with everybody?

For me the book picked up again before the end, when he looks at mythology (there IS a place for it) and reality. I don’t think Pinker falls into the trap of many logical science-maths-based thinkers in naively believing that all that needs to be done is spell out the facts to people and of course they will follow the logic. Not even scientists do this most of the time. Storytelling, rhetoric, political science, art – these all have a role in persuading, civilising, changing behaviours and enriching life. Being in favour of rationality is not a plea for cold hard logic and no fun.

But it is a call for critical thinking. It advocates open-minded discussion and exposure to ideas (versus so-called “cancel culture”). It promotes literacy – not the ability to read the words literally, but an awareness of who is writing this and why? What are the motivations of the speaker or author? Who is paying for this research? And show us the evidence, including the negative evidence. We should not accept no for an answer. Think about it – don’t be patronised.

It’s a timely and well-constructed book, and I am glad I read it. I don’t think there is much that hasn’t already been presented elsewhere (often in a more lively and persuasive way) but Pinker is Pinker: so some people will object to it just because it’s him. Just because other things he has written have courted controversy (for example I agree with his counter-intuitive conclusions in Angels of Our Better Nature, while I strongly oppose his linguistic agenda in The Blank Slate and The Language Principle). Although it’s a little dull in places, I think the book is sound, and of course reasoning about reasoning should be at least that!

More thinking about thinking

Heresies: against Progress and other illusions by John Gray (Granta, 2004) – Gray is ruthless in picking apart our lazy “accepted” ideas.
How To Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer by Sarah Bakewell (Vintage, 2011) – quite simply the most marvellous philosophical biography I have ever read.
Causing Death and Saving Lives by Jonathan Glover (Penguin. 1977) – taught me to think about ethics around the same time that Christianity started to teach me to think rather less…
Language, Truth and Logic by A J Ayer (Penguin, 1989) – this is a classic in Logical Positivism. Soulless it may be, but razor-sharp philosophy.