As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is conscious. This power to deny that other people have feelings is not just an academic exercise but an all-too-common vice, as we see in the long history of human cruelty.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the challenge of recognizing others' consciousness and emotions, which can lead to cruelty if ignored.
Steven Pinker emphasizes that understanding and accepting the consciousness of others is fundamental to empathy and morality. The ability to deny others' feelings is not merely intellectual; it reflects a serious moral failing that has historically contributed to human cruelty. This awareness is crucial for building compassion and understanding in societal interactions.
In practice
In a classroom discussion about ethics, a teacher might use this quote to illustrate the importance of empathy in understanding others.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)
The poor of the United States and of the world are your brothers and sisters in Christ. You must never be content to leave them just the crumbs from the feast. You must take of your substance, and not just of your abundance, in order to help them. And you must treat them like guests at your family table.
Oh, am I a feminist? I usually say that I was an accidental feminist. Really, I was just being me.
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, Confusion worse confounded.
Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.
Viper will eat viper, and it would serve them both right!
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