To Understand Is Not To Forgive

Lately I start to read Steven Pinker's highly-acclaimed book —— 《How The Mind Works》. Not like other book-reading experience such as 《Sway》、《Predictably Irrational》, it turns out to be a strenuous journey to digest such a witty, erudite tome on human mind, especially as a laymen. So, I have to change the habit of having a summary in the end to taking notes whenever I feel necessary.

When he discussed the implications of an innate human nature in charpter 1, Steven raised a very good point in the absurdness of blaming human bad behavior on our genes.

First, he refuted the concept that uncaused causation underlies the free will, and the uncaused free will underlies moral responsibility. Because:

1. Science see the world has no really uncaused events. Behavior is a complex interaction among:
• genes
• the anatomy of the brain
• the biochemical state of the brain
  
• person's family upbringing
• the way society has treated him or her,
  
• the stimuli that impinge upon the person.
2. According to chaoes theory, an unpredictable factor can be a cause of a hurricane of behaviors.
   

Second, he argued that science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning, we need to separates causal explanations of behavior from moral responsibility for behavior.

1. Science and ethics are two self-contained systems played out among the same entity in the world.
   
• Science treat people as material objects, explain the physical processes that cause behavior.
  
• Ethics treat people as free-willed agents as long as there is no outright coercion or gross malfunction of reasoning, assign moral value to behavior through the behavior's inherent nature or its consequences.
2. Depending on the purpose of the discussion, a human being is simultaneously a machine and a sentient free agent, different theories need to be applied to correspondingly.
3. Only by recognizing scienc and morality as separate can we have them both.

That means, we need to find a way to reconcile causation (genetic or otherwise) with responsibility and free will, we can't use gene to excuse our faults. To understand what cause we behave badly under given circumstance doesn't mean to forgive our faults easily. We are masters of our own fates.