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1 . What is the idea of the “blank slate”?

2. What are some of the reasons to doubt that our minds are “blank slates”?

3. What are some of the political or social appeals of the “blank slate” idea?

4. What evidence from the area of parenting supports Pinker’s theory that we are influenced by genetics and heredity?

5. Pinker is essentially arguing that all humans are influenced by both nature and nurture. We are born with some aspects and we learn others through socialization. Do you agree or disagree with his theory? Why or why not?

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Related questions

Briefly explain how the social disorganization theory (Shaw and McKay) influenced 1) Collective Efficacy Theory (Robert Sampson) and 2) Cultural Deviance Theory (Elijah Anderson) in different ways.

Here is the ready-to-answer question of Christian theology

January 27: Rigby, Speaking of God (chapter three on Incarnation)

Question: Drawing on Rigby's observations on pp. 86-90 (on Chalcedon), what difference does Jesus being fully divine and fully human make to how you live your everyday life as a person of faith? If you don't identify as Christian, how do you think the identify of Jesus should influence Christian choices?

      In her book Living by Fiction, Annie Dillard points out, along these lines, that most of what we have to say to one another is about "artifacts"-that is, specific things that have already been made by human beings that can be created, managed, examined, known, and mastered. 86  Dillard seems to include, in her understanding of artifacts, not only physical objects we make and use, or make and admire. She includes, also, the systems we develop that frame what is beyond our scope-perhaps the periodic table, the color wheel, or, even, a birdwatchers' guide. What is lacking in our world and our lives is not intriguing discussions of artifacts. What is lacking, she says, are those who are courageous enough to say something immediate about existence itself. "Who will interpret the raw universe?" she asks. "We have a shortage of metaphysicians." 87   This is a problem, Dillard thinks, because "if we confine our interpretive investigations to strictly bounded aspects of culture ... we miss learning what we most want to know."88

      But what is it that we most want to know? Influenced by Dillard, I have come to think about it this way: what we want to know most, I believe, is not everything about something, but something about everything. We want someone to say something that makes sense of the cosmos, of creation, of God, of love, of suffering, of existence. We are impressed with those who know everything there is to know about the periodic table, but we also want someone to risk saying something meaningful about the raw universe, even while acknowledging it will never be possible to say everything about it. The question is: Who among us is willing to risk speaking about what matters most?
 
     Theology is committed to knowing and saying something about everything. It is in the business of articulating what matters most to our lives, and the life of this world. As such, it is a discipline that risks engaging in conversations outside of its presumed expertise. The perimeters of the theological enterprise are delimited not by what theologians can most ably navigate, nor even by the specific callings of God to engage particular needs of the world. Bill Placher, reveling in the wide expanse of possibilities for theological discourse as they are reflected in the writings of Barth, writes: "From a Christian perspective one can engage in conversation with anybody about anything-from Mozart to Nietzsche to Pure Land Buddhism." 89   This, again, is not because Christians are expert in all subjects but because they are free to discover and articulate whatever something about everything is life-giving for all.
 
     The key, of course, is knowing what to look for and being able to discern it. How do we discern God's Word in this world so packed with both beauty and discordance? How do we go about exploring all that is around us in ways that get lost in the wonder of it all while still making judgments about meaning, value, and truth? Why is it so hard to get to what matters most, and how are we going to surmount these obstacles in our quest to discover and articulate the right words to say about God?
 
TO WHOM Is GOD DISCLOSED? GENERAL AND SPECIAL REVELATION
Calvin gives us a couple of categories that can help us frame our search for meaning in relation to God's self-revelation. In brief, he distinguishes between general and special revelation. By general revelation, he is referring to how God is self-revealed equally and to everyone in the world shared by all of us-in nature, in our philosophies, and in the way we conceive and develop governmental, ethical, and social systems. By special revelation, Calvin is referencing how God reveals Godself to particular individuals in particular ways not common to everyone. God's self-disclosure to the Israelites, for example, is a story of God selecting one particular nation to be God's people. God chose to love Israel, the biblical witness attests, not because of any virtue or merit of their own, but just because God wanted to. 90    God brought the father of Israel, Abram (later to be called "Abraham") outside to see the fact that Abraham was called by name, in the context of a particular event not experienced in general and by everyone.
 
When we consider how the doctrine of special revelation hits the ground in relation to our day-to-day lives, we will likely raise concerns about the sense in which it seems to endorse exclusivity even as we give thanks for the ways in which it affirms God's self-disclosure as personal and intimate. There is no question that, historically, this doctrine has been used to advance the idea that some are "in" and some are "out." in relation to God's favor. 92
Stone tools & the American Bottom
Four sites have been excavated in the American Bottom region of the Mississippi River. This area is one of the most fertile in the United States and has been occupied for many millennia.
 
Prior archaeological research in the American Bottom and neighboring regions has established a number of facts, listed below, that will help you to complete this assignment:
  1. During the Archaic period (9000-3000 years ago), people made large spear points, while during the Mississippian period ( 1000-500 years ago) people produced smaller points, due to the introduction of the bow and arrow.
  2. Experimentation and microwear analysis of edge damage of many tools has helped archaeologists determine production stages and assign general functions to a number of categories of tools.
  3. Study of the "hoes" has identified a distinct sheen due to being repeatedly forced into the ground. Hoe flakes were removed from the hoe but still retain the distinctive sheen.
  4. Two particular types of stone found at some of these sites comes from different parts of the United States. The obsidian - a volcanic glass suitable for flaking - comes from the American Southwest. The novaculite - a hard stone suitable for flaking - in contrast, comes from southern Illinois.
  5. Artifact categories - such as chunks, cores, and cortical flakes - are the results of the initial stages of stone tool production, where raw materials were converted to more usable pieces. Chunks are broken but unworked pieces of raw material. Cortical flakes are pieces with some of the outer cortex or rind of the nodule present on the distal (outside) surface. Unused flakes can be waste material or potential tools.
 
As a lithic analyst, you are asked to investigate the following issues:
  1. The level of stone tool production at the site (either production or utilization).
  2. The function of the tools and therefore the subsistence and economic orientation of each site.
  3. The potential connections between each site and nearby regions.
  4. The time period of each site (i.e., Archaic or Mississippian).
 
Based on the information provided above and data provided in Table 1, answer the following questions. Remember that archaeological data do not always support definitive conclusions. Still, there tends to be a best answer to the questions. For each set of questions (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12), an archaeological site will fit best in answer to one question. For example, it does not make sense to provide the same archaeological site in answer to Question 1 and Question 3, Question 5 and Question 6, and so on. Your answers should be brief and to the point; most questions require only the name of the site for an answer. If you feel you need to justify your answer, a couple sentences will suffice.
 
Table 1. Summary counts of various chipped stone products at the four sites included in this study. 
 
Stone tool production
Some of the artifacts at the sites represent specific types of tool manufacture. What stages of tool manufacture and use seem to have been most prevalent at various sites?
  1. Identify the site(s) at which people were extracting raw material, shaping nodules into cores, but not using many tools at the site.
  2. Identify the site(s) at which people at the site seem to have been both making and using stone tools.
  3. Identify the site(s) at which people were mainly using tools with very little evidence of production.
To answer this question, look especially at Note 5 and apply that to your interpretation of the data in Table 1.
 
General site function
As determined by the tool assemblages, which site best matches each of the descriptions below? Consider both the numbers of artifacts and the kinds of tools present.
  4. Based on the numbers of artifacts and the kinds of tools present, which site likely represents a temporary hunting camp?
  5. Based on the numbers of artifacts and the kinds of tools present, which site is likely an agricultural settlement with evidence for hunting?
  6. Based on the numbers of artifacts and the kinds of tools present, which site was likely a station for preliminary flintknapping stages, probably close to a raw material source?
 
To answer this question, look especially at Notes 2, 3, and 5 and apply that to your interpretation of the data in Table 1.
Inter-regional comparison
Some of the artifacts at the above sites show links with other regions.
  7. Which sites have affiliations with neighboring regions to the southwest?
  8. Which sites have affiliations with neighboring groups to the east (i.e., southern Illinois)?
  9. Which sites have affiliations with neighboring regions to both the southwest and the east?
  To answer this question, look especially at Note 4 and apply that to your interpretation of the data in Table 1.
 
Time period
Some of these artifacts also indicate a temporal association with either the Archaic or Mississippian period.
  10. Which of these sites appears to be occupied mainly during the Mississippian period?
  11. Which of these sites appears to be occupied mainly during the Archaic period?
  12. Which site is difficult to place within one of these temporal phases, and why?
 
To answer this question, look especially at Note 1 and apply that to your interpretation of the data in Table 1.
Earning the Points
To earn full points for the assignment:
  1. Answer Questions 1-11 (1 point each). These questions just require the name of the archaeological site(s).
  2. Answer Question 12 (2 points). This question requires two parts: (a) the name of the site and (b) why it is difficult to place in time.
  3. Write a clean paper (2 points). You can type your answers to the questions directly in the assignment. Just add some space. Although you are not writing a formal  paper, I still expect your assignment to be relatively free of technical errors (e.g., spelling, punctuation, and capitalization errors - errors easily caught by proofreading). I am grading more for substance than writing, but you risk losing points for unclear answers to the questions if your paper is sloppy.
 
 

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