• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • X
  • iTunes
Scott Barry Kaufman

Scott Barry Kaufman

Scott Barry Kaufman - Psychologist, Speaker, and Best-Selling Author

  • About
    • Bio
    • Education Manifesto
    • Sailboat Metaphor
    • Media
  • Books
  • Podcast
  • Research
  • Speaking
  • Resources
    • Newsletter
    • Self-Actualization Tests
    • Coaching
    • Courses
    • Articles
  • Contact
The Psychology Podcast, stimulating your brain since 2014
  • itunes
  • Stitcher
  • Youtube
  • X
Humanism, Enlightenment and Progress with Steven Pinker - The Psychology Podcast, Scott Barry Kaufmann

Humanism, Enlightenment and Progress with Steven Pinker

“Much of what we call wisdom consists in balancing the conflicting desires within ourselves, and much of what we call morality and politics consists in balancing the conflicting desire among people.” — Steven Pinker

Today it’s a great honor to have Steven Pinker on the podcast. Dr. Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, Pinker has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his ten books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, and most recently, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Pinker is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications. 

In this episode we discuss the following topics:

  • The main thread that runs through all of Pinker’s work
  • Does reducing economic inequality increase happiness?
  • Does increased autonomy lead to increased happiness?
  • How humanism is compatible with spirituality
  • Why we should not confuse evolutionary adaptation (in Darwin’s sense) with human worth
  • The difference between the ultimate and proximal levels of analysis
  • Why Evolutionary Psychology is often so misunderstood
  • Why human nature isn’t necessarily conductive to human flourishing
  • How the laws of the universe don’t care about you
  • Why do intellectuals hate progress so much?
  • What are some indicators of human progress?
  • Why should people care about human progress over the course of history?
  • The myth of the suicide and loneliness “epidemics”
  • Why we enjoy and care more about food and children than oxygen
  • Rates of sexual assault and mental health on campus
  • The increasing divisiveness and irrationality of politics
  • How the recent presidential election was a “carnival of irrationality”
  • Humanistic ethics
  • Can we have a good without a God?
  • The possibility of the unification of knowledge across the arts, humanities, and sciences
  • Toward a third culture

Related

Primary Sidebar

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • Copyright © 2025 · Scott Barry Kaufman